OpenXcom Forum
OpenXcom => Playthroughs => Topic started by: humbe on August 02, 2020, 10:19:33 pm
-
Previously I've saved and loaded my game a lot. Didn't like losing soldiers I've used a lot of effort to train, and radar mechanics seemed to lose me the game due to RNG screwing me over. But now that I see that I can counter by using graphs I thought I'd test an Ironman challenge, and write about the game to boot, to try and motivate myself to sticking to it when the going gets rough.
It will not be a speed run. I will prioritize trying to win the game as safely as possible, making sure Earth is not overrun by aliens. Better not take any chances to reduce my chance of success. Feel free to comment the game if you want to.
It will be on Superhuman, Ironman, with options set to vanilla default, with the following changes that are purely cosmetic:
- 1280x800 windowed with 1/2 geoscape/battlescape scale. Shouldn't affect game play, but makes it easier to get an overview, easy to alt-tab to write about the game, and easy to scale screenshots as it's a perfect 4x4 scale of the orignal game.
- Show funds (in geoscape) UI option. Doesn't add secret info. Just a nice addition.
- Arrow, Time Units & Death Notifications in battlescape. Neither adds anything secret, but looks like a nice UI improvement.
- Maximize info screens.
- Inventory stats. To avoid going into soldier screen as often, to checkup stats. Sounds useful. Not secret info.
I will be using the following mods:
- XcomUtil: Statstrings - Again, not secret info, can check soldier screen at any time, but makes it easier to look for a fitting soldier for a task.
I was considering also using the Limit Craft Item Capacities mod to make the game closer to vanilla, but I see that the Skyranger equipment counts agains the bases general store regardless which it didn't use to in vanilla, so if I'm going to take that hit regardless, I'll leave the 80 item limit off to get something back. (It's default off anyhow)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/01-SanMarino-Built.png)
Building first base in San Marino. It will cover UK, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Egypt and parts of Russia, and once I get a Hyperwave Decoder here it will cover all of North Africa, including Nigeria, and the whole Middle East and all the way up to the north pole. That's quite a few funding nations.
Looking through my 8 starting soldiers I have:
TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str
Dolph 52 54 30 20 43 44 75 40 40
Wesley 55 51 29 10 49 53 54 34 26
Dwayne 59 63 30 50 32 42 54 38 33
Jason 58 65 34 50 47 43 67 26 30
Jean Claude 56 58 29 50 43 62 61 32 33
Bruce 50 53 35 60 56 46 76 29 23
Sylvester 58 64 31 50 33 62 67 35 22
Arnold 57 65 30 60 60 45 77 40 22
I see firing accuracy will be an issue. With soldiers starting in the 40-70 range, this low rolls will be harsh and may end in disaster. We'll see. Bravery is a bit above average at least, which might come in handy with the losses I'll be expecting. TUs also start fairly high, 5 soldiers in the 56-59 range which will recover 14 stamina per turn. Arnold and Bruce starts with really good reactions and bravery, but sadly they need a lot of training to get their accuracy up. Anyhow. At least half this bunch is likely to sacrifice themselves for the common good in the first month alone.
To compensate for the lack of half decent radar in the beginning, we'll be analyzing reports on alien activity from around the world, and using our craft to patrol to try and discover UFOs outside of our radar coverage. We will also try to catch the UFOs on the ground, to try and steal alien tech rather than destroying it. While interceptors travel a lot quicker than the skyrangers and have good range due to their speed, the skyrangers have a massive fuel tank and can stay in the air to patrol for a long time. Thus we're planning to dump an interceptor for another skyranger. With only one interceptor, we'll not be able to shoot down any bigger UFOs but we'll try to fight these on the ground instead. We would really like to avoid night missions though. If we shoot down a UFO we can wait until daytime to attack the crash site. We will arm our interceptor with 2 stingrays to shoot down small UFOs when needed. That leaves us some chance of shooting down a very small UFO without destroying it too, and bigger UFOs we're not going to attack in the air regardless.
To begin with we'll have space for 50 crew, and we really want to prioritize scientists early on. We've got 10 engineers we don't currently need, but we'll hopefully need them before January is up so feels sad to just sack them. We're also expecting to lose soldiers, and with a second Skyranger it would also be useful to have two crews, so hiring some extra soldiers sounds good. We'll finish a new living quarter facility in 16 days, in which time we can fill our research lab regardless, so I guess a few scientists more or less those days won't make that much of a difference. We decide to hire 8 more soldiers and 14 scientists for now.
Sadly, the people that run XCom before I took over, didn't think of base defense when they built the base. To help the situation a bit, we're building two new hangars in north end of the base, to replace the ones down south. We plan to replace the general store they built with living quarters later, but we need to build new general stores before we can do that.
We decided to use up most of our money after hiring more people to start base changes:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/02-Base-Changes.png)
With limited money, we decided to start of building two new research labs as these takes quite some time to complete. Keeping 150 scientists on the payroll will cost quite a bit, but we hope to find money for them as we go. The two new hangars are a cost it would be nice to avoid, but if we do get attacked, it is nice to at least avoid being surrounded in our base. We would like to only have one contact point with hangars/access lifts though, but as it is, the living quarter up there will likely be staying there, and we are likely also building a living quarter left of the access lift, so if we do get attacked, there's multiple entrance points to guard. We'll plan better for additional bases when the time comes. Building two general stores (thankfully they are cheap), we should be able to replace the one we already have and build a living quarter there in 10 days time. Then we'll likely also start building a living quarter left of the access lift, giving us 4 living quarters ready at the same time that the research lab completes. We also very much need an alien containment center, but as funds are limited, it'll have to wait until we get our hands on some additional cash. It'll be first priority when we do. And once we have some extra and the old hangars can be dismantled, we'll also want a workshop or two more.
With the current plan, we're selling 1 avalanche launcher with 10 missiles, 3 cannons and 9 cannon rounds. We've also have bad experience with the Auto-Cannon, and we're selling off that one too. In total we earn back $173.883 for those. Getting rid of that avalanche launcher with missiles also does wonders for our general store capacity.
Finally, we order some more gear for our soldiers, remembering we'll be getting 8 more. 8 rifles, 20 clips, 10 HC-HE ammo for cannon, and 4 HC-I. 1 extra rocket launcher, 4 small, 8 large and 4 incendiary rockets. 27 grenades, 35 smoke grenades, 30 proximity grenades, 8 stun rods and 40 electro flares. That costs us $93.830.
Selling gear, actually got us enough cash to build the alien containment center straight away, so we're adding that to the order too.
Naturally, our few scientists, are ordered to look into how to make Laser Weapons. Hoping for some quick progress here. That's it.. All orders given. I guess we can lay back and keep scanning activity reports, and see what happens.
-
First activity reported comes already at 14:00 hours the very first day at work. A sighting is reported in South America. We immediately throw all our gear in the Skyranger, and starts flying down there. But at 14:30 hours we get two other reports, one from South Africa and one from the North Atlantic. The North Atlantic sighting I guess could be the same UFO that was over Brazil is heading towards Europe. Guessing that may be the case and that there's a second sighting in Southern Africa. At 15:00 hours, we get a new sighting in the North Atlantic, and a sighting in North Africa. Could we have two UFOs inbound Europe? Our interceptor is still rearming, not expected to be ready before 3 hours. They often are optimistic, so I'm guessing they'll be ready at 19:00. We're not flying to South America anymore though. Giving our Skyranger currently above Spain orders to patrol Europe instead. A new sighting in North Africa at 15:30.
At 16:00 we're actually spotting a very small UFO heading North East at very high altitude at 2200 km/h around the Provence area in France. We should have had our interceptor ready for this. Not expecting this small UFO to land, so shooting it down would be the best we could do. With it's current trajectory, we're guessing that this is the UFO that came over the Atlantic, and that there's another one incoming from Africa. Will try to patrol to look for that one to see if that might be a bigger one.
After seeing reports in Central Asia and Siberia, we're guessing the other UFO has gone over there, so we send our Skyranger out there to look for it, and at 19:00 we strike gold and spot a small UFO at low altitude heading south west at 480 km/h over Aktobe in Kazakhstan.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/03-intercept_vs_or_s.png)
Our interceptor is now also finally ready, an hour late as expected. Now the big question is where to send it. The very small UFO is still flying around Europe, and it would be great to shoot it down, but it is much faster than our interceptor, and fairly likely to outrun us. If the small UFO land around Russia, it's in the middle of the night. We haven't gotten our flares yet, so that will be very dangerous as I hear the aliens can see just as fine in the dark as they do in the light, and our starting equipment didn't include a single flare or incendiary ammo piece. Sounds like a better option to try and shoot down the small UFO, and if we manage to, we can await attacking the crash site until daytime.
As luck will have it, the UFO lands exactly when our interceptors catches up with it. So it can't shoot it down, and I really don't want to engage the UFO at night. Our interceptor is patrolling above, but I'm not surprised if it ends up having to return due to no more fuel before the UFO is in the air again. Actually, the UFO ended up staying down until the sun is starting to rise. We tried to time it so we landed the Skyranger just as the day is starting, but I'm hoping we didn't time it wrongly. We didn't want to wait any longer than absolutely required so the UFO didn't have time to vanish.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/04-first_combat.png)
This'll be a tough one. As luck would have it, a sectoid soldier is aiming his plasma weapon straight into our Skyranger as the hatch opens, and he'll be ready at max TUs to reaction fire many times into our craft. Wesley is ready at the entrance with a smoke grenade in hand, but priming and throwing it will cost 40 TU and it sounds very likely that there'll be reaction shots that'll kill us. Dolph has a heavy cannon ready. He can't shoot straight at all, but with a HE round he might get lucky and get close enough. Sounds like possibly the best bet. Dolph actually made the shot, and killed the Sectoid, but got a reaction shot from the right, which killed him instantly. A short career to be sure. Wesley is about to throw a smoke grenade out, but a misclick and he moves forward a tile, and a reaction shot from the side of the Skyranger kills him instantly. Jason picks one up and throws one straight forward. We don't dare move out before the smoke grenade goes off, and we don't want to be sitting ducks in here, so we detonate yet another smoke grenade in the skyranger. (Though I guess the one Wesley was wearing did likely get primed, so it will go off too.. We'll see.. Yeah.. Two smoke grenades went of in the skyranger and one below. A sectoid soldier moved up to the ramp but thankfully one of our soldiers had the skills to react and shoot him down before we got yet more shots into the Skyranger.
Morale isn't high here, 25% of our soldiers are dead and we haven't left the Skyranger yet. Let's move out. Moving out we detect the enemy UFO we see that we're on the southeast end of the map, with hills all around, except for northeast at the map border where we spot what looks like a small UFO facing us.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/05-first_combat-moving_out.png)
As we saw two reaction shots from aliens. One from area in front of UFO and one from the map corner down southeast, we were thinking there was an alien hiding in the map corner, and thought we'd better try to secure that corner so we can find a position where our backs are safe. But moving into the forest we found nothing. We know there's at least one alive alien here that shot at us last turn and we have no idea where he's at. Bollocks. Wasting more TUs to spot him with almost no TUs left to react if we do doesn't seem like a great idea, and great ideas are needed.
Yet another open question, is, did we miss the mark and create a night mission, or is there enough light for the detection distance to be 20 instead of 9? The sectoid we saw to begin with were more than 9 tiles from our front soldiers, so I'm really hoping for that, but there do seems to be some light coming from the Skyranger, so dunno if that could be the reason we saw him. We stay put at the position above. We hear a door being opened, but we don't spot anyone.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/06-spotting_two.png)
In turn 3, Jason clears the map corner and walks towards the UFO trying to hide behind a tree, as he suddenly spots two aliens. Phew. At least we can spot them at decent distance. Those two looks like prime targets for the guys in the smoke. The smoke is too thick for them to see each other. As they are close, lets have Jean Claude attempt to use this rocket launcher. Yay.. Bulls eye.. Both are down. Moving a bit further we spot a third one outside UFO, and we send 12-18 rifle shots at him but none hit.. Sadly we just end up waiting hoping the smoke will still cover us. We seem to spot some more movement while we wait but noone shot at us. Moving a bit forwards we spot a second one and the one we saw last turn. We shoot down one and throw a grenade at the other one. Not sure if the grenade will kill him, so we use him for rifle target practice too.. We don't hit him, but from the sound, it sounded like we may have hit someone behind him.
The grenade killed him, and it turned out that was the last alien. Boy were the six remaining lads happy to have survived this first alien encounter.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/07-first_combat_result.png)
3 Plasma Rifles + 3 clips, 4 plasma pistols + 6 clips, 50 elerium, 1 power source, 1 navigation and 12 alloys. Quite a bit to research here. Sadly no expensive Mind Probe but still loot worth $1.599.010. Enlisting two more soldiers won't make us broke yet.
-
Since you are doing this Openxcom challenge, why don’t you give my Hybrid mod a try? Every thing is still vanilla like you are currently playing, with a twist of TFTD merge with UFO..
Was never a fan of TFTD. Not sure what your mod does, but there's a lot of Nostalgia involved here, so going to do this first OpenXCom playthrough as Vanilla as possible, and I'll see where I'll go from there.
-
After documenting all the alien artifacts for later research, we sold almost all the alien artifacts on to private firms wanting to look at them. Sold everything apart from the Elerium and the weapon clips for a nifty $1.303.500. That means we can afford another workshop or a research lab, but as we're moving hangars and don't want to build next to the new ones, we're currently out of space until we can dismantle a hangar. We could have managed with one skyranger and one interceptor for a while, but we can't even dismantle one of the hangars, as we're building new facilities neighboring the hangars that aren't next to any other completed facility.
Dolph and Wesley died.. We'll be arranging a burial soon, but for now, we'll hire two more soldiers, and buy a skyranger as an extra patrol aircraft.,
The very small UFO went out of radar coverage and disappeared by the way. As expected, never landing as far as we could see. Current graph of UFO sightings now show:
- ~27 for Siberia.
- ~12 for Europe.
- ~4 for North Africa.
- ~2 for North Atlantic, Central Asia & Southern Africa
- ~1 for South America
Let's watch for changes. It'll be harder now that the activity isn't zero to begin with :/
But as we saw activity in Europe and in Siberia, I'm thinking that might be the two spots the aliens are focusing on this month, which suits me well as it's a neighboring territory.
-
In the middle of the day on January 2nd, we got our gear that we ordered when we arrived. Finally we have flares, proximity grenades, incendiary ammo and a decent supply of smoke grenades.
In the middle of the day on January 4th, we got 8 new soldiers incoming.
Angelina 52 62 39 40 36 63 73 25 24
Steven 55 41 38 20 49 69 53 40 26
Chuck 57 54 37 30 58 55 79 37 31
Clint 53 63 38 20 49 60 69 29 20
Jackie 59 53 30 10 59 61 58 36 22
Jet 58 42 32 50 53 41 76 33 40
Mickey 54 55 39 30 40 56 61 31 38
Keanu 50 53 30 10 49 70 58 20 40
These ones seems to have heard about our outcry of troops that can't shoot. Who will get the privilege of being first out of the Skyranger next time around? I guess we can await deciding until we need to fly out.
We also got the 14 extra scientists. Did I forget to order our original 10 to work on laser weapons after they had a look at the alien artifacts? Strange.. I might have seen wrong. In any case, 24 working on laser weapons now.
-
At midnight night to January 5th, we got 2 more crew members and the second Skyranger coming in:
Vin 51 58 34 20 47 69 80 36 22
Charles 52 52 25 30 46 43 52 40 25
Nothing more in transfer. Getting tired of checking the post office every 30 minutes checking for more activity reports though.
Finally I think I have spotted something. January 5th 10:08:40. It seems there's some new activity in central Asia. We find some rookies to throw in the front of the Skyranger, and sends it eastwards to patrol. Hopefully we can find a landed UFO before night falls. The UFO is very likely to be on the way to Europe or Siberia though. We'll monitor reports to see where it goes if radar doesn't catch it. At 10:30 hours we actually spot it on radar. A small UFO, heading northwest at high altitude travelling 2400 km/h. So looks like it is coming to Europe. Currently it's between Cyprus and Turkey. There's many hours left of the day in Europe, so hopefully we can attack a landing site before night falls. If it doesn't happen, we'll send the interceptor after it to shoot it down and attack the crash site tomorrow.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/08-second_ufo_hrmpf.png)
Grrr.. The UFO went east into the night so we sent interceptor after it. It flew away from the interceptor and landed in England though, but now our Skyranger is too far east to be able to catch the landing site in daytime. If only we've kept the Skyranger more west when we launched the interceptor. We can likely get there in time for a night mission. At least now we have flares. Oh wait.. Did we remember to add those to the Skyranger? It doesn't really look like it. Other option would be for interceptor to patrol and hopefully still be around to shoot it down when the UFO takes off again. Or possibly send it back to refuel and launch it again later.
We're not doing a night mission without flares here. Set the Skyranger to return, hoping interceptor can patrol long enough to shoot it down. The Skyranger used 4 hours to refuel a 76% full fuel tank, and we weren't able to get it going again with that tank even though it didn't need much fuel to get to England. After around 3 hours our interceptor was out of fuel and returned, but the UFO was still on the ground. We expected it to fly away, but somehow it was still on the ground when we got there January 5th 23:40. Ok.. So at least it's a land mission where artifacts aren't destroyed, and we do have lots of flares now, but it's still a night mission, so I'm expecting hell.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/09-second_ufo.png)
We seem to be on a 4x4 tileset, where we have one tile north of us, and one tile west of us containing the small scout. The corner tile northwest of us looks like a good area to conquer. Then we can face the UFO with nothing on our back, and throw flares around and see whatever comes at us. Sounds like a plan.
-
We deploy most of our guys outside hopefully in the cover of smoke. Leaving some in the Skyranger. Hope no alien sees enough to drop a grenade in here.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/10-no_alien_in_sight.png)
I was sure some of them would be around here waiting for us to come out. It's not like the Skyranger landed safely away from the UFO to not arouse suspicion like I asked them to. I see a building over there though, and I'm guessing it has a second floor. Think we might start next turn dropping a smoke grenade on top of the UFO to avoid reaction fire from anyone on the second floor there. Then maybe see if we can shoot down some of the wall there.
No alien spotted when we started turn 3, but the smoke is cutting our sight too. We walk the two rookies hiding behind the Skyranger wheels a bit outwards, and we end up spotting some. First an alien close to UFO corner which we hit with the heavy cannon with a HE round, removing some of the hedge. Then we see another two, one ahead of the hedge and one behind it. Mutual surprise when we spotted them, and Sylvester shot them down from inside the smoke. Have put a few flares more close to the UFO and thrown a smoke grenade on its roof. Moving up northwest next turn I think.
Eventually we finished after 11 turns. An alien was hiding behind the building and shot through it once we moved on the UFO so Sylvester sadly died. He was first wounded, but heroically didn't stay in cover and was shot a second time.
Looted 12 alloys, 2 navi, 1 power, 50 elerium, 1 mind probe, and some plasma weaponry, this time including a heavy plasma weapon with a clip.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/11-combat_done.png)
I guess we'll need to be reasonably happy with only losing one soldier on a night mission, and Sylvesters reactions wasn't awesome. Hired a replacement soldier. Gotta try keeping the stream inbound.
Arnold was promoted to captain and is now our highest ranking officer. He's firing accuracy is still low at 47 but he looks like he can become an awesome soldier if we manage to keep him alive. Angelina, Jean Claude and Bruce have made Sergeant rank.
Graphs now showing ~53 activity in Europe and still ~27 in siberia. Central asia up to ~5, north africa ~3 and I guess mostly equal to above for ~1-2.
-
At midnight, at the start of January 6th we finally researched Laser Weapons. That took some time. Assigning our 24 scientists to research laser pistols. Looking forward to start producing laser weapons. But still 11 days until we can hire more scientists
8th of January a new recruit arrives. He calls himself prince and looks to have lots to learn with the following stats:
TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str
Prince 52 56 35 10 39 52 75 33 34
At 19:24 January 9th we're seeing reports on some more activity in North Africa. We'll send up our empty Skyranger as a patrol towards Africa to begin with.. At 22:00 we're seeing the vessel on radar. Exposed by my interceptor that I sent out when I saw activity reported in Europe too. It's a small UFO travelling west into the baltic sea from the baltic states, at low altitude doing 1080 km/h. As it's fairly early in the night, we'll see if we can shoot it down over land and recover what's left at daytime.
As luck will have it, it outruns our interceptor, and then goes down to land in Denmark. Our interceptor likely won't have fuel to patrol until it's in the air again, and if we send it back immediately we may very well still be refueling when the UFO launches. It may try to land a second time so we have more options, but it might very well not too. This sounds like another night mission. Maybe the second Skyranger wasn't such a great idea. A second interceptor would have helped us being able to shoot UFOs down easier to avoid some night missions.
But I guess there's too much loot awaiting us, and we should save the people in Denmark, so it smells of another night mission.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/12-3rd_combat.png)
We don't see anyone outside, but we're limited by no light. There may very well be multiple aliens looking into our Skyranger for all we now. There's a two story building just in front where they may be hiding and ready. Maybe we need to dump a smoke grenade at the Skyranger exit too, to try and limit sight at level 2.
Short career for prince it turns out. He throws out a smoke grenade and got shot down. *sigh*.. They're reaction shooting for each TU I spend, and kill of 2 far back in the Skyranger too. Eventually we destroy the building and get out. We lose a fourth soldier fighting close to UFO, but finally the aliens succumb to our numbers. This was a larger cross shaped UFO btw.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/13-3rd_combat_result.png)
Prince, Bruce, Chuck and Jet died for the good cause. We hire 4 more soldiers, and as midnight come and January 10th is starting our researchers at least have some good news. Laser Pistols are ready for production, and we can start researching a rifle variant.
Activity graphs are now at around 62 in Europe, 26 in Siberia & 6 in North Africa.
We haven't sold the loot for the last couple of runs so our general store is overfilled. But on a days time we will have built two new ones.
-
Already new activity in early Sunday morning. Reports in both Europe and Siberia, though Siberia report latest, so I guess it flew over there. Sending out our craft to patrol. At 05:30 we spot a small UFO at low altitude going west at 540 km/h around Kislokan in Russia. It's spotted by our interceptor that moved out there much faster than the Skyranger, but at that speed and altitude it may be landing very soon, and our Skyranger with our platoon is on the way. Hopefully we'll manage a daytime mission this time around.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/14-4th_combat.png)
Still dangerous in daytime, but having good view at least makes morale higher. Finally a mission in broad daylight. A bit surprised this is 4th mission on small UFO and it's only the 10th of January. 11 soldiers were alive and well for the mission. Should hopefully be enough. Managed to dump a smoke grenade outside and wait a turn without seeing any activity or reaction fire this time around at least.
The little forest just in front of the hatch is the north east corner of the map, so a good place to gather to get our back against the wall. Then maybe conquer the height and get our heavy weapons up there. Might want to get incendiary weapons ready here too..
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/15-4th_combat_result.png)
Keanu was promoted to Sergeant. He is looking to be a good sniper. Yet 4 more soldiers killed. Vin, Angelina, Dwayne and Jackie :/ One died hiding behind a tree within 20 tiles from the UFO entrance in hopes of spotting them, but the alien just walked out and shot him straight down from behind what I hoped provided some cover. Two died around the UFO entrance. Tried to move some up there to throw a proximity grenade and carry away some artifacts. Did not enter the UFO.
Alien graphs are now at ~64 for Europe, ~41 for Sibera and ~6 for North Africa. Base store is even fuller, but less than a day until our 2 new general stores complete.
-
Currently, we have 6 soldiers ready for action and 2 wounded. 8 more hired but 44 and 54 hours before we get 2 more batches of 4 each. 11 soldiers have been lost in action, some of them really good recruits. Lets take a break and analyze a bit what has gone wrong in these 4 missions.
- Many have died due to unlucky start, where the Skyranger landed so the aliens could see soldiers inside the Skyranger, and thus reaction shoot due to us arming smoke grenade and throwing it. It is hard to do anything about it. Especially when they're in a position where we aren't able to see them so we don't even have the optio of whether to try and shoot them down first. We could have taken more care to put the most expendable soldiers first always though, to try and avoid losing important soldiers at least. We have done it a bit, but as there's new troops coming in every mission, we have taken it a bit lighly. Hopefully we can get some armor and make it a bit less lethal later.
- Another killer is aliens spotting us while moving in their own turn. Even though we may have many players with line of sight to them, they often gets to drop the first shot, and they generally seem to have pretty good accuracy. Several have died on first shot from an alien in their turn, before any reaction fire have been attempted. If we had manage to hide our players better at the end of our turn, avoiding aliens spotting us, we could try to spot the aliens again in our turn trying for mutual surprise and no reaction shots, and then shoot them down from a distance and go hide again. It's a tedious tactic though, and we're getting a bit impatient.
- Thirdly, there's been some misclicks and missing information and ironman is unforgiving. Not knowing how many TUs we'll be using to pick up something, and then ending up with too few TUs left to hide, or thinking that we'll have X TUs left after moving given path, but then it turns out we had less. For instance, we thought we could mostly move anywhere for 4 TUs sideways and 6 diagonally, even if we started of facing in other direction on our knees, but seems we use extra TUs to get up or change facing. Is the pathfinding with the display of TUs left always correct? I can't go back in time to check on ironman, but I feel I've lost TUs I thought I had some times
- In general, we've been a bit impatient and the pulse has been running high. If we're a bit more calculating and slow moving, I hope we can improve on the statistics. Laser weapons and some armor in the future will also help I hope.
-
13th of January 09:00 the second batch of new recruits have arrived. We're back at 16 soldiers though Arnold and Clint are still wounded. Arnold should be back in a few days, but Clint is seriously hurt and the estimate is that he needs 34 days before he's back in service. Almost reason enough to retire him, but we'll let him be on the payroll for now..
The new soldiers are Daniel, Linda, Sigourney, Viggo, Ryan, Jeremy, Gal and Michelle. Tried to make a more detailed overview of current soldiers:
Starting stats Current stats
TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str Score
Daniel 52 51 30 30 35 54 61 40 29 2.5
Charles 52 52 25 30 46 43 52 40 25 3.5
Linda 55 45 26 30 50 43 76 40 21 4.5
Clint 53 63 38 20 49 60 69 29 20 57 68 44 20 49 61 70 29 29 4.5
Sigourney 54 45 35 10 32 69 72 28 20 4.5
Mickey 54 55 39 30 40 56 61 31 38 59 67 45 30 40 57 63 31 45 5
Viggo 50 60 27 40 56 54 68 25 23 5.5
Jason 58 65 34 50 47 43 67 26 30 63 68 38 50 47 44 71 26 34 6
Keanu 50 53 30 10 49 70 58 20 40 54 61 38 10 49 75 58 20 45 6
Ryan 57 65 25 10 38 70 80 31 34 6
Jeremy 56 56 38 60 52 53 78 27 24 6.5
Steven 55 41 38 20 49 69 53 40 26 59 47 43 20 49 73 54 40 31 6.5
Gal 53 44 39 50 57 61 77 27 37 7
Jean Claude 56 58 29 50 43 62 61 32 33 59 64 31 50 44 64 61 32 34 7
Arnold 57 65 30 60 60 45 77 40 22 64 69 35 60 61 46 78 40 30 7.5
Michelle 60 42 39 10 55 67 55 31 35 8
I've tried to create some sort of score based on their stats, to make it a bit easier to see who's more valued than others. Especially putting value to having good reaction and firing accuracy, and ignoring some of the stats that are easily trained and/or not that important. Not putting the formula here, as it'll likely be changed and it's far from good. Just using it as a value to sort my soldiers in the Skyranger.
I'm not going to update the current stats bit after every mission either.. Just once in a while.
If we were to sell all the alien artifacts we have found, we'd have a bit more than 7 million dollars available. In 4 days time, we'll be hiring 26 scientists for 1.56 million. In 14 days time, we'll want another 50 scientists for 3 mill. If we can afford it, we may want 50 more in 20 days time for another 3 mill, depending on getting even more cash in the system prior to that of course.
In 6 days time we'll complete the alien containment center, at which time we hope to find a navigator to research and get hyperwave decoders fast. When we do, hopefully fairly early in February, we'd like to build the decoders, which are fairly expensive. Likely we'll want to build at least 2 more bases, and expand to 6 bases total as soon as we have money for it, to get decent coverage of all funding nations and most land.
-
Currently, we have 6 soldiers ready for action and 2 wounded. 8 more hired but 44 and 54 hours before we get 2 more batches of 4 each. 11 soldiers have been lost in action, some of them really good recruits. Lets take a break and analyze a bit what has gone wrong in these 4 missions.
- Many have died due to unlucky start, where the Skyranger landed so the aliens could see soldiers inside the Skyranger, and thus reaction shoot due to us arming smoke grenade and throwing it. It is hard to do anything about it. Especially when they're in a position where we aren't able to see them so we don't even have the optio of whether to try and shoot them down first. We could have taken more care to put the most expendable soldiers first always though, to try and avoid losing important soldiers at least. We have done it a bit, but as there's new troops coming in every mission, we have taken it a bit lighly. Hopefully we can get some armor and make it a bit less lethal later.
You can have the first soldiers arm the smoke and drop it in the inventory screen and end turn. No reaction fire. You can also prearm grenades with right click while equipping the soldiers.
- Another killer is aliens spotting us while moving in their own turn. Even though we may have many players with line of sight to them, they often gets to drop the first shot, and they generally seem to have pretty good accuracy. Several have died on first shot from an alien in their turn, before any reaction fire have been attempted. If we had manage to hide our players better at the end of our turn, avoiding aliens spotting us, we could try to spot the aliens again in our turn trying for mutual surprise and no reaction shots, and then shoot them down from a distance and go hide again. It's a tedious tactic though, and we're getting a bit impatient.
- Thirdly, there's been some misclicks and missing information and ironman is unforgiving. Not knowing how many TUs we'll be using to pick up something, and then ending up with too few TUs left to hide, or thinking that we'll have X TUs left after moving given path, but then it turns out we had less. For instance, we thought we could mostly move anywhere for 4 TUs sideways and 6 diagonally, even if we started of facing in other direction on our knees, but seems we use extra TUs to get up or change facing. Is the pathfinding with the display of TUs left always correct? I can't go back in time to check on ironman, but I feel I've lost TUs I thought I had some times
Kneeling take 4 TU and standing up takes 8.
If you tell a soldier to walk on a spot behind him he will not waste TUs for turning, but if he spots an enemy while turning he will waste turn TUs and will not move. Do you see numbers as in the 1st picture below?
The move stats that you see do not take account of the above.
The solution: Hold shift to force move soldiers. They will not stop if they spot aliens and will not waste TUs turning on the move.
I can see the TUs needed to put things in every slot of the inventory when I pick something with the mouse, and I think this is OXC or OXCE feature, not a mod.
- In general, we've been a bit impatient and the pulse has been running high. If we're a bit more calculating and slow moving, I hope we can improve on the statistics. Laser weapons and some armor in the future will also help I hope.
Yep, nothing teaches caution like ironman. Your save might get corrupted though, you should occasionally make a copy or use willpower instead of the ironman option. I can't so I roll with backups. You can use a text editor to copy paste the save in another file, I find it easier than copying the file.
-
As January 17th starts, we finish a living quarter facility and hires another 26 scientists to fill the first research lab. We also hire another 20 engineers so we will be able to produce laser rifles a bit faster then the time comes. 5 laser pistols built so far. We see that we have screwed up facility placement somehow, making it still 10 days before we can demolish the general store in the location we want to build the 4th living quarter module. If we had switched around a general store and the research lab, we could have demolished and started another living quarter right away. Not expecting first ironman game to be anywhere close to optimal though, so shouldn't matter too much.
Two more days pass without any alien activity. Alien containment center is now complete, and we have 8 stun rods ready, hoping to capture a navigator on the next UFO. Hoping to see one very soon. It's been quiet for a while now.
Tiresome to let the clock run when I want to know when new reports come in at the graph as fast as possible. Currently checking each hour. Would be nice if it was possible to get a notification when the graph had been quiet for a while, and it suddenly got activity again.
Thanks for the suggestions Tarkalak. Hadn't thought of waiting a second turn before starting by deploying a smoke grenade inside Skyranger. Sounds like something to do when we suspect issues at least. Force move also sounds like an interesting option to be aware of. I'll take a closer look next battle. I'm trying to keep the game totally vanilla, so haven't been looking for extra functionality, but some of it might have been in the original without me knowing about it.. But I've kept all the settings on default on purpose..
-
It looks like there may be activity in Europe in the night 19th of January. Flying some ships out to patrol.. Yupp.. Small UFO travelling 1404 km/h at low altitude, travelling northwest currently just above Austria. It's not all that long until daylight comes, so hopefully we'll be able to get a daylight mission possibly without shooting it down. We scrambled our interceptor at around 01:30.. Will try to track when it is out of fuel.
We flew up the Skyranger close to the landing site, and awaited sunlight, and the UFO was landed until sunlight came, and interceptor was still hovering it.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/16-5th_combat.png)
We seem to be positioned on the eastern edge of the map, where there's 5 tiles south to west, and we are seeing the 3 in the middle. We did prime a smoke grenade before landing, so should be play safe and dump it where we stand or use an extra round to be safe. I guess we can test out the latter, though it looks less likely that we'll get reaction shots inside UFO on turn 1 this time around.
I don't see any info on TU cost when I pick up to move stuff in inventory though. I guess it might be an OXCE thing, or an option that isn't default enabled because vanilla didn't have it. Though I can't remember seeing any in OX as I think I'd have added it if I found it.
-
Thanks for the suggestions Tarkalak. Hadn't thought of waiting a second turn before starting by deploying a smoke grenade inside Skyranger. Sounds like something to do when we suspect issues at least. Force move also sounds like an interesting option to be aware of. I'll take a closer look next battle. I'm trying to keep the game totally vanilla, so haven't been looking for extra functionality, but some of it might have been in the original without me knowing about it.. But I've kept all the settings on default on purpose..
You are welcome.
Force move isn't vanilla, and prearming grenades before the battle isn't either, but you can arm them first turn and drop.
Sitting the first turn in the craft is pretty common advice, because the AI has full TUs on the first turn.
In the mod I play, there is some superhuman only code, that turns most aliens towards the craft at the beginning of the battle. I am not sure if that applies to unmoded game, though.
-
Fifth mission completed. No aliens spotting Skyranger immediately. Walking out on the ramp, we saw the roof of the UFO behind the forest west of the Skyranger. Forest is dangerous territory. Hard to know whether you are in cover or not, but hard to get line of fire for snipers positioned further back, so anyone around there can easily run into a surprise. Tested out throwing a smoke grenade and a proximity grenade into it, and going around it instead.
The field next to the forest had a fence at the end, so if we stayed all the way up to the edge of the map, aliens on the other side of the field will not see us. Perfect place for snipers, and then I could move a spotter forward and get mutual surprise if any aliens walked out.
The plan sounded good, but in practice shit still happen. We lost 3 soldiers. 2 soldiers we lost to friendly sniper fire. We thought they were fairly safe, but then "snipers" can shoot 30 degrees of the intended trajectory, not much is safe, and while there was plenty of space to not hit our own soldiers, any shot missing a lot seems to hit exactly where it shouldn't. There should also be at least one navigator in that UFO, and we were expecting him to be one of the latest out of that UFO if we waited it out. We shot down whomever got out while we tried to get in position. (Stun rods on soldiers outside UFO around the corners of it) The first one we stunned was a soldier, but the second one was jackpot. A navigator. We carried him around the corner just in case we ended up wanting throwing explosives outside door.
But later sadly a fast moving sectoid went around the corner and killed our third soldier. Another incident where we had a live alien up there which we had issues hitting, we ended up using the heavy cannon and blew up at least one mind probe. Grmpf..
But... NAVIGATOR.. At 06:39 19th of January.. That is an awesome result. But I think we'll finish research of laser rifler before switching.
We lost Linda & Viggo which neither was very promising recruits, but Jeremy which was one of the two in position to stun had great reaction and bravery and would have been a very good addition. We're sad to see him go. On top of that Sigourney got wounded and needs to stay 22 days in the hospital. That's 2 soldiers with long term issues.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/16-5th_combat_result.png)
We're selling most of the alien loot, and end up with 3.9 million dollars in the bank. So what do we need money for in the near future?
- Hyperwave decoders - With only 50 scientists, it will take on average around 18 days to complete, and it may be some time before we're done with the laser rifles too, but in 8 days time we hope to get more scientists, to hopefully speed it up.
- New bases - Once we get to decoders, we'd like to put down extra bases for better radar coverage. It would be nice to get these bases built 16 days in front, with a living quarter, so we can avoid putting the decoder bordering the access lift. If so we should probably do that very soon. First two bases we'd like to add is in US and China, and they cost $800.000 and $750.000 to build. Would be nice to add living quarter and general storage for base defense too, but that costs quite a bit extra. And a hangar or two to be able to have more local interceptors would also be nice.
- More scientists. In 8 days time we'll have space for 50 more. In 16-24 days time yet 50 more.
- Workshop - We only have one and it takes forever to build, so if we have spare cash and a palce to put it it would be nice to add another one.
Our soldiers keep getting killed, and we have some extra living space now, reserving 20 free space in workshop for projects we're building, that leaves space for 20 soldiers. We recruit 7 new ones now.
After the mission, region activity graph for UFOs have risen to around 84 for Europe, sticking at around 42 for Siberia and 6 for North Africa and 1-3 for the rest.
-
At midnight, beginning of January 20th, 26 scientists and 20 engineers finally arrive. Laser Rifle progress turns to Good in the now full research lab. Still takes 5 days to finish the last 12 of the 20 laser pistols we ordered though. Hoping we abort that earlier due to inventing rifles.
21st of January we see new activity in Central Asia and Siberia.. We sadly didn't check reports often enough, and probably could have spotted it an hour earlier, but now at 16:42 we're scrambing skyranger-2 and the interceptor to go patrol for it. Will probably send out skyranger 1 too, as soon as we've checked the equipment we have loaded. Hrmpf.. We searched around until 06:00 January 22nd, and past all of Russia more than once, and still didn't find it. I guess we lost it.
At 06:00 we got the 7 new recruits incoming. Jennifer, Ben, Roger, Mel, Harrison, Tom & Uma. Don't look like good soldier candidates, but we'll see what happens.
After the lost UFO, Siberia graph is up at around 48 and Central Asia 4. Not that big a movement so I guess it may very well have been a very small UFO. If it was a small UFO that landed, I would have expected to have found it patrolling.
At midnight, at the very start of January 24th, we finally discover how to make laser rifles. This will make a huge difference during combats. Laser pistols are awesome fast. It's possible to fire of 12 shots in one turn using 4 auto shots. Laser rifles is a bit slower, so you can only manage 6 shots per turn, but each shot is a lot more accurate and deals more damage. It does twice the damage of the regular rifle, and is more accurate for snapshots and autoshots. It is slightly less accurate for aimed shots, but you may be able to fire of two aimed shots instead of one per turn. Our workshop has almost completed making the 17th of 18 ordered pistols. We'll let them finish the 17th before starting on rifles. At 04:00 we finish the 17th pistol. 11 days and 3 hours is the estimate to finish 20 rifles. Might be a few missions before that, but there might be some ready for the next mission.
The 50 scientists will now focus on the Alien Navigator. While there's lots of nice bits to research for us, getting real radar coverage is priority one. Scanning these reports in details is hard work.
At start of January 26th, our hangars are complete, and we can finally dismantle our southern ones. We do, and also start building another workshop. We need another day to finish 2 research labs and a living quarter, at which time we will demolish the original general store and start building another.
At start of January 27th, living quarter and research lab completes. We want to hire another 50 scientists, but as it's already so late in month, we have to await until February to hire them, to avoid paying them a full January salary. Should have been cheaper to hire them late in month :)
January 28th, 23:23:30. New activity reported in Siberia. Sending out all 3 crafts to patrol. If we find it fast, it should be great timing for a day mission. Ouch.. Terror in Novosibirsk
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/18-1st_terror_mission.png)
At least we filled the Skyranger with 14 soldiers, and we did manage to produce 8 laser rifles in time. We expect this to be another sectoid mission, and if so we're expecting cyberdiscs. Hopefully we'll be able to deal with them with our laser rifles but they are fairly armored and may take quite a few hits, so it might be hard to get everyone to survive.
Supposed to save as many civilians as possible too, but if we run fast into the town, we're sure to be shot down randomly here and there. We start in the corner of the map, so I think we'll just hope the civilians can hide a while, and secure our corner and try to slowly take on the town, part by part.
The start looked like a place where cyberdiscs could reaction shot into, so we dumped a smoke grenade on the floor, awaited a turn, and dropped one outside and waited another turn. In the meantime we heard a ton of shots, and around 10 civilian death screams. How on earth were we supposed to save these people? Almost all died in the first two turns?
We deployed, and ensured to keep the most expendable troops in front. We actually scouted and shot down 4 cyberdiscs without a single casualty. Pretty awesome and much better than expected. One was even shot down by a laser pistol alone.
The deaths came from the spotters being seen by aliens during their turn. Again, I guess we could have tried to hold the position close to the skyranger, and awaited aliens to come to us. But just sitting put waiting and moving a bit back and forth to see if there's someone approaching is a pretty boring strategy.
The score ended up negative, so no score gain for the mission.. But the 29 alien artifacts are probably worth a pretty penny.
Daniel, Ben and Roger died. They were all three rookies with poor stats. All in all though, we thought we did pretty well on our first terror mission facing 4 cyberdiscs.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/19-1st_terror_mission_done.png)
Graph is now up to ~63 for Siberia and still around ~84 for Europe.
-
Night to 30th of January we finish researching the navigator and moves on to hyperwave decoder.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/20-january_report.png)
First month done. They say it's excellent and that they are happy, but the US and Japan don't want to increase funding, so the extra funding is a bit lower than we hoped for.
Hired 50 more scientists and 3 more soldiers immediately.
Already in 1st of February we see another UFO on the radar. It's a small one heading south. We expect it to be coming for Europe, but it flies through and down south in Africa. We follow it with interceptor, but as it's daytime we just track it while we get Skyranger down there to fight a mission.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/21-first_ufo_down_in_feb_africa.png)
It's a jungle mission with floaters, and it went pretty good. Poor Charles got shot while searching up the last floater that hid in the jungle.
-
I guess Africa might be an active area this month. It's hell to see anything minor on the activity reports now, as it is cluttered from last month, so maybe we should try to keep patrols over Africa.
After selling most of our alien artifacts, we have 6 million in the bank. Lets build a base in US and China now, so we have locations to put decoders in. We actually ended up building bases in Brazil, Zimbabwe and Australia too. With those 6 bases, when we get decoders in all, we'll cover all land on earth apart from Antarctica and the southern tip of South America. Will likely put a 7th base in Antarctica at some point.
Building living quarters in US Base (Great Falls) and in China base (Weinan), to connect a decoder and a general store behind it later. Costs a bit with living quarters too, so delaying putting them in 3 other bases, until I'm fairly sure we can afford building 3 decoders when we have researched that.
The activity graph is a mess. South Africa now at ~13. Europe/Siberia graphs are 0-5. Hard to say. Others look to be zero.
-
Night to February 4th, another 50 scientists and 3 soldiers arrive. Progress of Hyper-wave decoder went to good after assigning them. But it's an advanced project that takes quite a bit of time. We're soon done producing the 20th laser rifle too. Securing a rifle for all our soldiers. Last mission we could have equipped all 14 soldiers with one, but we opted for one to still have the rocket launcher with incendiary rounds for the jungle. We should probably have used that one more to try and burn down the forest. If so Charles could possibly still be alive.
It's heavy ammo though, so impractical to carry enough to do it.
A fourth soldier also came. The new four are Maggie, Sylvester, Milla and Val.. Sylvester looks to be the most promising recruit we've seen to date:
TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str
Maggie 51 62 36 60 30 55 65 29 24 4.5
Sylvester 58 59 40 40 59 67 75 40 23 8.5
Milla 57 63 40 40 34 58 56 35 24 5.5
Val 50 67 30 40 36 66 79 39 30 6
We have lost a few good soldiers, but we've also lost poor soldiers and gotten better recruits, so no disaster yet. Will be good to get some armor to up chance of survival though. After we have researched decoder, body armor is a potential next goal. Mind Probe would also be nice to be able to capture a Sectoid leader when the chance comes. First aid kit could have saved a few soldiers.. And Plasma Cannon and Firestorm would also be nice to have.. Quite a bit to research.. We'll see about priorities later..
All 20 laser rifles have completed production now. In lack of other bits to make, we've set the engineers to make more to sell to others for some income. It'll pay the engineers salary while we await more work at least.
Been quiet for a while in February, but at 10:00 7th of February we detect new activity. Now around 15 in South Africa and around 3 in Central Asia and North Africa and 1 in Antarctica. I guess the UFO came from Antarctica and travelled northwards.. If the same UFO has all that activity, I guess Central Asia is it's most likely current location. We're sending interceptor to Central Asia and starting to move Skyrangers into Africa to get some coverage there too.
New activity showed it in Central Asia which isn't a too big area so we are surprised we used so long before spotting it.. But at 15:00 we finally did.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/22-UFO%20spotted.png)
It's night time, so I'm hoping we can shoot it down. But it's at considerable speed, so it might be done and going back at higher speed than we can catch. It does speed away from us, and it does lose the interceptor which is out of fuel and heading home, but we do reaquire a UFO in southern part of Africa which we assume is the same one. It actually stops in southern part of Africa and lands.. As we no longer have interceptor we can use we're sadly looking at another night mission..
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/23-6th_UFO_mission_start.png)
We dumped a smoke grenade inside. Threw a flare in front and saw that the corner was empty, so then we threw a smoke grenade outside too before waiting a turn.
Three casualties yet again. Mickey, Milla and Val. Neither had reaction to be faster than the aliens and bit the dust. Mickey due to a failure on my part. Throwing a proximity grenade before moving behind corner, but thought turning ones was enough, but turned twice, and then I had one TU too little to move around the corner. Other two deaths were spotters being spotted first. Mickey have been our heavy weapons expert, and had amassed 7 kills, but with poor reaction and firing accuracy somebody else can easily fill his role.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/24-6th_UFO_mission_score.png)
After the mission alien score in South Africa is ~29 and ~11 in Central Asia. North Africa maybe 3, Antarctica and Indian Ocean 3-4 and Could it have landed there and took of again? I thought UFOs went straight for mission area before wondering around.. Or could there have been two UFOs? Hyperwave decoders will just be sooo nice.
Hmm.. We also found a small launcher with stun bomb this mission.. Too bad we have to research it before we can use it. Would be nice to get Sectoid leader, but not expecting to have capacity to research it first, and mind probe will be more useful if I have to pick one of the two.
With the loot from this latest mission, we can actually afford building 3 decoders I think.. Yay.. But we seem to be slow to research it..
-
Finally.. Night to February 10th.. Hyper-wave Decoder.. A milestone in any game.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/25-decoders.png)
This means we need to prioritize what's next to research right now. It feels wasteful to use on average 600 researcher days to research Mind Probe which isn't required, but it's a very nice utility, being able to find out if an alien is the alien we need to capture, and also checking if he has TUs left to react. We're not playing for an optimal quick game anyhow, so lets give it a go.
Starting to build one immediately in San Marino, but Great Falls and Weinan bases have 7 days left to build living quarters.. Thinking we'll await those before starting to try and build and easy to defend base.
-
Three replacement rookies have arrived:
Orlando 59 40 27 10 59 56 62 33 29 6.5
Charlize 58 40 40 40 58 41 62 23 25 6.5
Kate 58 51 37 60 46 70 77 20 40 8
All look like decent recruits. Kate looks especially promising though her reactions could improve.
11th of February we notice reports on more activity in Central Asia.. Creating patrols. Leaving the fast interceptor with the upper route, as it'll be fastest, and then it can travel towards Africa which we are not surprised if the UFO ends up over.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/26-more_activity_patrol.png)
Eventually located the UFO, and managed to make it to it before it set off again, or before night came. I was sure I was over that place once or twice with the interceptor though. Isn't the detection chance 100% if the UFO is landed? I'm pretty sure the spot was within the interceptors circle at a half hour boundary earlier. Well well.. All is well that ends well..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/27-found_7th_ufol.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/28-7th_ufo_start.png)
It's a small UFO and I'm guessing we're facing floaters again. I don't like all these buildings close to us though. Close quarter reaction shots easily cause death. On the other hand, if we get on top of the roof of this building we have an excellent sniper position..
-
Hehe.. After dumping smoke and waiting a turn I shoot at the wall to make an opening, and as I shoot auto, I shoot down two wall pieces, and an alien standing behind it. Lucky me ;D.. Yeah. Floaters again. Looks to be a floater month. Shooting a whole on the second floor and see yet another one.
We sadly lost another soldier due to a lucky long range shot from an alien spotting us through a building. Orlando looked like a promising soldier, but his career ended quickly.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/29-7th_ufo_scoret.png)
With the loot from this mission, we can afford building another 2 decoders, even after building living quarters in the remaining bases. Thus doing so. Two more decoders being started in 6 days, and three more can be constructed in 16 days if we find new money.
Both Central Asia and South Africa scores for the aliens are now around 29.
Friday the 12th of February we see reports of new activity in Southern Africa, and a new patrol ensues. This time we don't seem to find anything though. Either the vessel is on the ground somewhere we aren't able to see it, and it'll get more alien score once it is done, or it was a UFO that didn't land or stay long.. Africa score up to 35.. Not a big rise if it was an unhandled UFO. Maybe it was a very small scout that went away fast.
Night to 14th of February we finished Mind Probe research. At least that went faster than average. Moving on to alloys, thinking we might want to start working towards FireStorm and Personal Armor. Living quarters are finished in San Marino, meaning we have space for another 50 scientists, but hiring them costs money, and so does building decoders. Thinking we'll delay more until we have build decoders.
14th of February around noon, we get some reports from the Indian Ocean and Central Asia. Scrambing another patrol. Landed UFO located in northeast India. Got interceptor patrolling above. Our skyranger is a bit away though, so wonder if we make it before it takes off again.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/30-8th_ufo_mission_start.png)
We did make it, and that makes for another night mission. The skyrangers nose is parked at the edge of the map, but otherwise there may be enemies all around, and there looks to be plenty of places to hide here. Better take a catious approach moving out..
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/30-8th_ufo_mission_report.png)
Finally a mission without casualties.. Armed with laser rifles all around we can just spray out shots all over the place, and try to shoot holes in walls of these wooden buildings. I think all aliens but one was out of the small cross shaped UFO. Engineer being the only one left in it died of proximity grenade walking out. Mostly we detected them spotting each other with a spotter, and then took them out with a sniper or the spotter. Some were detected after we shot down walls.
After fight, central asia graph is at ~48, North Africa at ~34, indian ocean around 8. Selling the loot we have around $5.2 million. If we sell a bit more we have money to build another 4 decoders. 2 will be started in 3 days time, in 13 days time we can start building in last 3 bases, and we expect to afford the 6th decoder too at that point, if we get another mission in between. That will be 27th of February, meaning we'll have world coverage of decoders around March 25th, and the first on ready around 8th of March.
We could hire more scientists too, but it's hard to know when we'll get money back to build decoders, and buying them at this time, would not make them available before 17th of February, which would only make them research 10 days for a full months salary. I think we'll still prioritize decoders for now.
Turns out nothing happened before living quarters finished the 17th. Started building 2 more decoders in US and China bases.
-
Later on the 17th we spotted more activity in South Africa and head south to patrol.. Eventually we saw this:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/32-spotted_large_ufo.png)
Night was coming and we were really hoping to fight the UFO in daytime, so was crossing fingers for it to land. Finally a large UFO to fight..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/31-hunting_ufo.png)
And then it landed.. Terror UFO of course. I shoulda guessed.. Looks like we'll just be able to catch the site before night fall..
We landed facing the border, but after dropping smoke and moving out next turn, we turned left and saw two floaters fairly close. Trouble is we were missing a lot, and got less TUs as people moved longer to get out, and the people already out was in the way. Trying to take out the 2nd we turned away to make way for new shooter and spotted 4 more next to the skyranger towards the front. And then we tried to move out on other side to get around to shoot them we spotted a big beast. Too many for us to take them all out, and we were expecting havoc, but one of the remaining floaters fled instead of fight, and the beast didn't manage to get close enough to attack (seemed to waste it's TU). We did get a surprise shot from another direction that sadly killed Jean Claude, but other than that we escaped much better than expected. After that we cleared the area with all the people we had out. Sadly, Maggie died of friendly fire after walking forwards to spot another beast. One would think one of our better snipers would manage to avoid friendly fire, but alas..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/33-2nd_terror_mission_done.png)
The end score was pretty sweet. Got more money selling the loot, and ordered builing of hangar and general store in Great Falls and Weinan bases. Once they complete the decoder in 26 days, they should have space for some soldiers and gear for base defense, and have a hangar we can park an interceptor in. Still, we have 3.5 mill left, so we don't need much more before we can buy 3 more decoders in the last 3 bases. But still 10 days to go before living quarters are ready there.
Jean Claude was the most experienced soldier we've lost to date I think, with 10 missions and 7 kills, he also had pretty decent stats at 63 66 33 50 44 65 62 32 37.. If it wasn't for the bit low reaction score he would have been pretty awesome.
After the mission, alien activity is listed as ~54 in South Africa and ~48 in Central Asia, and 8-9 in Indian Ocean. Antarctica is also around 6 and North Africa around 4.
-
This was the screenshot of the activity graph after the terror mission:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/34-subtle_activity_report.png)
Looking at the graphs, we are a bit lucky noticing a change late 18th of February pretty early. Do you notice it?
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/35-moving_east.png)
It looks like the Europe graph has moved upwards slightly. Pretty hard to notice. I'm downsizing my screenshots though. I'm doubling up pixels on my screen so it's simpler to see here. I was hoping the "Maximize info screens" would maximize graphs too, but alas, it doesn't affect them.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/36-more_in_east.png)
Half an hour later, and we see the Central Asia graph moving up a notch too. We're moving our patrol east, as that makes sense as there's been earlier activity there this month.
At 23:00 hours we spot it:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/37-spotted.png)
We have the interceptor there, but it's soon morning, so we're currently just tailing it with the skyranger hoping for it to land so we can make a non-crash day mission for maximum loot..
At midnight we are interrupted by scientists.. They have finished researching alloys and they now start looking at personal armor. Would be nice to up survival chances on the battlefield..
-
Thought I'd cover a mission more in detail, if anyone is interested in my battle tactics:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/38-9th_ufo_mission.png)
We're in the southwest corner. Straight ahead there are buildings that may hide aliens, though we see the doors are locked, so I guess the chances of there being one in the right one is minimal. There's also a hedge tile down there, that may hide aliens that can just walk in at very close range. When we step out we can likely look pretty far out the grass field in the middle though.
Also, we've been facing a lot of floaters this month. Would not be a surprise if there were floaters this time around too, and if so they may be up in the air, and sitting on the Skyranger for all we know. We'll start turn one with a smoke grenade outside and inside.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/39-9th_ufo_mission1.png)
Started by deploying smoke and deployed around skyranger in turn 2. Noone in sight. Shooting a few holes in buildings and hedges to look a bit through.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/39-9th_ufo_mission2.png)
Shooting more holes but no alien in sight.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/39-9th_ufo_mission3.png)
We're seeing more and more, but little enemies.. Where are they?
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/39-9th_ufo_mission4.png)
And here we see the first alien. Not surprisingly a floater. We easily shoot him down at range.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/39-9th_ufo_mission5.png)
Seeing more and more of the map but few enemies. We hear a lot of UFO doors though.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/39-9th_ufo_mission6.png)
Clearing a bit up north. Took out second floor of building, but as we moved through the first floor, Clint was shoot through a window and sadly died. Getting up on the roof here will give us excellent sniper positions though.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/39-9th_ufo_mission7.png)
Hiding behind a hedge to look out each turn and spot for enemies. Have put a guy with decent reactions down south at a UFO corner to try and shoot down any alien that tries to move in on us from the south. It never happened though.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/39-9th_ufo_mission8.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/39-9th_ufo_mission9.png)
With good sniper positions were were able to mostly be the ones detecting aliens moving with mutual surprise and shoot them down from range. No further casualties. And all died outside the UFO.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/40-9th_ufo_mission_done.png)
Clint sadly died, but other than that the mission went very well.
-
21st of February we invest Personal Armor. We start looking into Elerium-115. We're hoping for better armor later, but rather than building laser rifles for cash, our 30 engineers can start making some personal armor instead. Would be nice to have for the spotters at least.. 13 hours until the 31st laser rifle produced for cash is built. After that we'll change..
We have money to spare after the last mission. We could hire more scientists, but I think we'll be waiting until the start of March to avoid paying full salary for the few days that remain of February.
22nd of February at 13:00 hours, we are back to 20 soldiers after enlisting four more recruits:
Nicolas 59 56 27 50 51 49 58 27 24 6.5
Christopher 53 56 35 60 54 66 73 27 24 7.5
Will 58 42 28 10 41 50 57 20 39 5
Scarlett 53 60 30 60 54 44 61 28 21 5.5
The 27th of February we finish building living quarters in last 3 bases. Starting to build hangars, general stores and hyperwave decoders in all three. Our second workshop have completed, and there's only 9 days until our first decoder is done. Elerium has also been researched, and we're researching UFO power source. 5 personal armors have been produced.
It's quiet on the UFO front indeed. Will there be anymore in February?
Nothing appeared, and February has gone..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/41-february_score.png)
Everybody is happy with our performance this month ;D
At the start of March, our bases looks like the following:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/43-main_base.png)
Here's the main base..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/42-new_base_layout.png)
And here's how all our other bases look like, though the last 3 are later in the progress, having 24 days left for the decoder. But we will have pretty good world radar coverage 25th of March, marking the end of graph tracking.
We have collected 500 elerium since the beginning, and not used any of it yet. It's filling up our storage, so moving 200 units of to each of Great Falls and Weinan. We have no defense in those bases yet, but they are not operational yet and no craft has been shot down near them, so we're assuming any retaliation missions will come against San Marino base first at least. I guess we'll have to try and get some soldiers and equipment in other bases for defense in not so long..
-
March activity scanning started off in a fray.. During the night we managed to see a subtle graph change, and by eliminating noise by looking at region by region, we saw that there was small activity reported in arctic, north america and south-eastern asia. That doesn't really sound like one UFO. Do we have two at the same time? We send interceptor to the US and the second empty skyranger to the south-eastern Asia and let the skyranger with our assault team stay put until we know if we should head east or west.
Once the interceptor is in US and the second skyranger on the way to Asia, we notice that the activity is increasing in asia but not in the US. Not long after we see a small UFO landed in Asia, and we send our assault team. We're expecting it to come late, but we manage to get there in time, though it's going to be a night mission.
At least we have 7 soldiers with personal armor now. Hoping that helps a bit.
The interceptor is out of fuel and returned long time ago. We didn't see anything in North America. Guessing it was a very small scout that succeeded its scouting mission and returned. So I guess March activity is going to be North America and South East Asia.. That's going to be rough as both regions are pretty far away from our main base, and far away from each other.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/44-10th_ufo_mission.png)
Deployed and finding enemies.. Ich.. Not another floater month.. I want a sectoid leader.. Finding everyone outside of UFO. Sadly, Jennifer dies when scouting and finding alien that spots her first. I guess we might have moved a bit too far compared to how far we had thrown a flare.. The personal armor didn't help one bit sadly.
Other than that the mission ends up fine. Jennifer had very poor reaction and rifle skills, so a replacement will be good regardless.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/45-10th_ufo_mission_score.png)
Ok.. So floaters are attacking South East Asia in March.. But we have also spotted minimal activity in Arctic, North America, Siberia and Australasia.. Hoping Australasia won't be another region this month. That's far away from Europe. Siberia action is likely just same UFO that went into Asia. I guess it could have come south through Australasia too, and the second UFO came from arctics into US. Sounds most likely given that the activty came from 2 UFOs. SE Asia activity now at ~32 while rest with activity was 1-2.
Selling the loot, we can now afford another 25 scientists. Then we're up to 150 once they arrive, maxing out our research lab capacity. 150 should research fairly fast, so think we'll avoid building yet another. We have engineer capacity for 50 more engineers though. So I guess we'll hire more of those when we get even more cash again.
-
During the 4th of March, we got the remaining scientists and when 5th of March came we finished researching UFO Power Source.. Starting on Power Suit..
At 06:32 we notice another activity report in South East Asia.. Scrambling to patrol and hopefully intercept.. 3 more armors made, so now we have 9 soldiers with personal armor.. Which will be the first 9 out of the door.. At 10:30 we see it.. A small UFO at very low altitude heading north west at 1188 km/h. We need to be lucky for this to become a day mission.. Night is coming fast.. Yay.. It kept going north west and landed while skyranger approaches from the north west, so we look to have just made it before night came. Bringing flares equipped just to be on the safe side though.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/46-11th_ufo_mission_score.png)
It was a day mission with farmland/buildings against floaters in a large scout. Sigourney and Scarlett was sadly killed. Personal Armor not doing squat this time around either. Sigourney was no rookie anymore with 10 kills, but both of them had poor training. Sigourney had low bravery and reactions, though were a good shot. Scarlett was brave with decent reactions but couldn't shoot straight at all.
Selling all the loot, including some of the alloys we've been saving, we just manage to afford 50 new engineers. Hired.. We should soon have researched power armor so we can make some better armor faster..
-
Around 20:00 6th of March we see some more activity reported in Australasia.. Removing graphs to remove noise we see that Central Asia, Southern Africa, South Atlantic and Indian Ocean also have had a very small bit of activity. But that don't need to be new as it's normally covered by the messy graph..
Sounds likely that the UFO is just travelling over Australasia on its way to South East Asia, but we're not sure. Sending the interceptor and empty skyranger heading a bit north of Australia while we will inspect graphs.
Half an hour later, another sighting in Australasia, but half an hour after that, we have activity on South Eastern Asia. At this time we send our assault team eastwards too. Curiously we see no more activity reported in a while. We had removed some regions from the graph to remove noise, but adding it back we see that I've been tricked, and the UFO is now in Northern Africa. We send the assault team over there while the other crafts are returning, but we find nothing. Activity in North Africa stabilize around 9. I guess that means a very small UFO.
While chasing it we invented Power Suits and started looking at UFO navigation.
8th of March we finally finish the San Marino Hyperwave-Decoder with big celebrations. We will still need to look at reports as we finish building the rest, but now we should detect a lot of activity better. 7 more days until Great Falls and Weinan decoders are done, at which point we will have pretty decent coverage. At least of northern. Covering the entire northern hemisphere and some bits south of the equator in Africa and Asia.
Here is the coverage of the first decoder:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/47-first_decoder.png)
A pretty fair chance to see quite a few UFOs going elsewhere than Europe too..
By the way.. Scanning reports have been easier once I tested out keyboard shortcuts.. G to open graph, and 1 to get to 5 second time.. Meaning I can avoid using mouse to enter the screens, so I can allow time to go faster, as I easier enter graph screen, and easier turn back clock to 5 sec after exiting it..
10th of March 10:30, still no more alien activity. 5 more days until next two decoders, and 15 for the last 3. Not so long until I can stop scanning reports.
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/48-first_decoder_detection.png)
First decoder detection. I guess it's floaters all around this month too ;/.. And North Africa and South East China is likely the active areas.
This UFO will likely evade us, but we'll send the interceptor to attempt to shoot it down.. After 3 failed attempts of shooting it down, it landed, and while we assumed it would fly away while we was moving skyranger down there we actually had a short night mission against it. First mission with no casualties I think ;D
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/49-12th_ufo_score.png)
Went out of money to produce power suits just before reaching it, but after selling the heavy plasma gun and the mind probe we found there, we can produce some more..
If North Africa is a hot region that fits us great though, as we now have it within decoder coverage.
-
11th of March and we invent UFO Navigation. We can now research Flying Suit and UFO Construction. Lets just get Flying Suit out of the way first.. Now that we have 80 engineers we produce Power Suits pretty quickly, so would be nice to get to Flying Suit before we have that many ;)..
At noon 12th of March, we are out of alloys to make more suits, as we sold quite a few to afford the extra engineers. Setting the engineers to make some laser rifles for cash until we get some more alloys.
13th of March we invent flying suits.. Could go on to UFOs, but currently interceptor weaponry is more of a limitation to shoot down UFOs than the craft itself. Researching Heavy Plasma + Clip first to get to plasma beams.
14th of March we finish hangars in Great Falls and Weinan. One day left for decoders.
At 01:00 we get another activity report:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/50-13th_ufo_spotted.png)
Small UFO. Harvest mission.. Probably going to be morning before it lands. Sadly still floaters of course, but sounds like a ground assault. It's in North Africa where we're sure to see it, so no need to send anyone but the assault team. Now, we have front 5 soldiers in power suits, and the rest in personal armor. Maybe soon we'll see a spotter surviving a hit. Oh.. And I guess we should enroll the 3 recruits that have come to fill in vacancies.
George 57 45 32 20 33 55 80 27 26 4.5
Colin 57 64 38 50 50 42 62 28 21 6.5
Daisy 51 66 38 60 54 68 68 27 20 7.5
Putting George in front of the Skyranger for the mission.. useless git ;D.. We've given him a power suit though.
-
The UFO landed quickly, so was a bit unsure if we'd manage to delay until daytime, but we tried and it worked out.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/51-13th_ufo_deployed.png)
George was shot with a plasma gun, but survived with minor injuries with the new armor. Awesome. Thus, no casualties to report.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/52-13th_ufo_score.png)
Saw some activity in South Eastern Asia late in the 14th of March, and scrambled to patrol, but failed to find anything. Still patrolling when 15th comes and gives us decoders. Decoders show nothing, so guessing it was a very small UFO we failed to intercept.
Yay.. Three decoders online. Starting building a second hangar in Great Falls and Weinan. What to stuff in the first? With Skyrangers we could get to landing sites quicker. With interceptors we could down more UFOs taking the mission when we had time.
I guess we will move the second skyranger to Weinan and get some soldiers over there. Then consider whether to get interceptor or Skyranger for Great Falls base. We might even juggle them around month for month based on where there's activity.
As there seems to be activity in Asia this month, we're buying 12 soldiers there, and transferring 4 experienced ones from San Marino to make a strike team there. Also buying some flares, grenades, and a missile launcher to add some utility..
18th of March, and we see a terror UFO coming up in Asia..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/53-14th_ufo_terror_asia.png)
Shooting it down is sadly not an option, so we'll just have to await they starting their terror mission. By not starting to fly against it immediately, we should manage to make it a day mission..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/54-14th_ufo_score.png)
We started off spotting 2 floaters from the ranger, and as we killed one of the, we removed a wall spotting a third with view to the ranger. It's turn 1 so they do react and shoot back, but we're saved by the power suits and escape the mission without casualties. Having a single flying suit on a sniper helps as we can fly high to more easily get line of sight.
-
In the morning, 06:00 the 19th of March, radar shows a large scout going for alien harvest in North Africa. Our assault team hasn't come back from terror mission yet, so we're sending the new Weinan team to hopefully assault them. As their fresh and far away, we decide to take the interceptor and shoot the UFO down. When we're sure they'll make it in time, and they'll likely face a few less aliens.
The new team is:
Starting stats Current stats
TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str Score
Halle 60 69 27 50 33 46 73 37 37 5
Russel 55 50 26 30 42 64 51 21 28 4.5
Jennifer 57 52 30 30 43 52 74 24 32 5
Michael 53 42 26 30 50 53 63 22 40 5
Matt 56 69 38 40 39 64 63 31 24 5.5
Liam 57 63 31 10 46 61 50 26 30 6
Denzel 52 56 36 30 54 60 69 35 32 6
Eric 58 57 36 50 34 60 75 27 37 6
Karl 58 65 26 50 38 65 64 26 21 6.5
Nicolas 59 56 27 50 51 49 58 27 24 63 62 32 50 51 52 58 27 27 6.5
Steven 55 41 38 20 49 69 53 40 26 66 55 45 20 49 76 54 40 40 7
Sigourney 59 65 34 30 51 64 56 27 20 6.5
Kate 58 51 37 60 46 70 77 20 40 64 65 44 60 46 71 77 20 48 8
Michelle 60 42 39 10 55 67 55 31 35 72 58 50 10 55 76 57 31 54 8
Dolph 53 61 33 60 51 67 62 38 26 7.5
Bruce 58 61 35 60 58 69 58 34 32 9
Nicolas, Steven, Kate & Michelle are experienced soldiers from the San Marino team that transferred to help out the recruits. We've managed to equip all with laser rifles, but there are very few armors among them. One flying suit and 4 personal armor suits. Lets hope they can deal with it..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/55-15th_ufo.png)
In North Africa we were in desert which was pretty excellent for fighting. We could put snipers all over the place, and hide a spotter behind a hill who could walk up and check if any aliens had come out last turn. Our snipers weren't that far away so they weren't 100% safe, but that meant they got of some reaction shots too. They only managed to shoot once at us when walking out of the UFO and thankfully that was a miss.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/56-15th_ufo_score.png)
Excellent start for the new team. Most got promoted to squaddies, and that ended up in promotions for several in the main assault team. It seems the UFO took little damage when shot down, so we even got Elerium from it. Starting to get a lot of Elerium so we've had to start dividing it around our bases as it takes up quite a bit of storage space.
07:00 the 7th of March, the alloys we got from the last mission finished transfer to San Marino, and we can resume building flying suits. Power/Flying suits have proved very useful for survival.
22nd of March we finish researching heavy plasma.. Putting all effort into clip to get to cannon fast. The 23rd we finished researching the clip and starting to research plasma cannons.
The 24th we finish hangars in the last 3 bases. 1 day to decoders complete. Starting building a second hangar there too, so we have good hangar capacity when we need it. They are fairly cheap anyhow.
25th of March. Eureka.. We finish the last 3 decoders. Now we have 6 decoders alive.. And here you can see the massive coverage:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/57-6base_radar_coverage1.png)
The three first bases cover all the way to the pole, and cover all land in the northern hemisphere and even North Africa..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/57-6base_radar_coverage2.png)
The Africa and Brazil bases ensure we cover all of the atlantic too..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/57-6base_radar_coverage3.png)
For the Australia base to cover New Zealand and Fiji it's positioned a bit too far east to cover all of the Indian Ocean, so there's a fairly small coverage gap from the Indian Ocean and southwards. In addition, Antarctica don't have coverage. We'll build a 7th base here at some point in time to rectify that. As a matter of fact, we have some spare money right now, and it takes time to build a base, so lets just start it off, and see if we can come up with a better base defense design here as we have no rush..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/57-6base_radar_coverage4.png)
Lastly there's a huge gap in the pacific. There just isn't any good island to put another base on. No French Polynesia on the map? No place for the aliens to land there though, and not a typical area for them to fly. Don't expect the hole to be significant at all.
That marks the end of the activity report scanning. Now we can just let our radars do the work, and detect most UFOs coming into Earth within the first 30 minutes, and even decode signals as to where they're heading and what mission they're on, so this will significantly simplify planning.
-
Soon we're out of alloys to create more armor. Main assault team now has 4 power suits, 6 flying suits and 4 personal armor suits. The new team has 1 power, 3 flying and 6 personal armors, leaving 4 members without any if we fill the skyranger.
The flying suit has even better armor than the power suit, and can fly to boot, but with a flying suit, you spend a lot of extra TU to get down. So wondering about keeping a few power suit wearers in front of the skyranger, which can cheaply get of the ramp and down to the ground to spot around the plane. So maybe 4 in front in power suits, and the remaining 10 in flying suits. Don't think we're going to start producing our own alloys currently though, as we're a bit short on cash too after starting the 7th base, and building plasma cannons will cost $226.000 per unit.
26th of March and we invent Plasma Cannons. UFO construction and better crafts are a natural next step, but before going there, I think we'll research a medikit first. Would be nice to be able to save people getting fatal wounds in combat. Have already lost a handful of soldiers to fatal wounds, and as we now have much better armor, we'll potentially get more soldiers that end up hurt rather than dead.
Better crafts aren't all the critical anyhow, as long as it's preferable to attack UFOs on the ground (to get more loot). Now we also have good coverage and should be able to intercept most UFOs on the ground, at least if we're ok with night missions. We're not, but we'll deal with it. With flares it's not a disaster. Now that we have plasma beams, we can shoot down terror UFOs which will be the most critical ones to shoot down, to avoid a terror mission where we should try to save civilians. Interceptors don't have unlimited range though, so we should station some more around the globe.
We start building 2 cannons immediately, and they complete 13:00 hours. Stingrays/cannons could still be useful to not totally destroy very small and small scouts, but the chance of shooting down a very small UFO is so slim anyhow, and the scouts we're going to try and attack on the ground instead. Thus, we're going to free up general storage space by selling all conventional craft weapons. Storing missiles is taking up a lot of general storage space.
28th of March we finish researching the Medi-Kit. Anything else worth delaying better crafts for? For the engineering downtime it would be nice to be able to build laser cannons that private firms crave around here, but we're hoping to keep our engineers busy building crafts and armor and the like, so it's not a priority. A motion scanner could be useful, but I think we'll manage. The small launcher could be a very good addition when trying to get a sectoid leader though. But with several stunrods and mind probes to check remaining TUs of the leader, I think we should manage without that too. Lets go for UFO bits next. At least up to Firestorm.
Due to lack of funds, we're limited to building around 10 medikits for now.. No alien activity to capitalize on soon?
30th of March we finish researching UFO construction. New Fighter Craft next.. 05:00 we finish building 10 medikits, and we've got $6.764 left in bank. We transfer 5 medikits to Weinan, and goes back to manufacturing laser rifles for profits. At 16:00 they arrive in Weinan. 11 hours to ship goods from Italy to China.. Not bad.
At 18:30 hours we finally spot some alien activity.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/58-16th_ufo.png)
Likely the last activity this month. Some more loot to sell sounds good. Not sure what will happen to funding, but not surprised if we end up getting bills that are higher than the funding, as we've enlisted quite a few more people that wants wages.
Night has just started in Africa, but the UFO is currently over Australia so may be some time before it lands still. It sounds likely that it'll land during nighttime though, so I guess testing out the new plasma cannons to shoot it down is the simplest way of getting a day mission.
These new plasma cannons make mincemeat of the UFO which don't have any chance of retaliating.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/59-16th_ufo_shot_down.png)
-
We put our 5 medikits on the 5 in front of the skyranger. The most likely people to be used as spotters and get hurt.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/60-16th_ufo_deploying.png)
Another desert mission. Sounds good to me.. But we're deploying right outside the entrance to the UFO. Looks a bit dangerous as the aliens can suddenly pop out and see us fairly close, and might even think that a grenade in here would be a good thing.
Silly George needs 6 shots before he takes down the floater under our skyranger. At this low range, I'd expect better even at 56 firing accuracy.
Jason arms a proximity grenade and hands it to Harrison that moves out and throws it outside the UFO. Hopefully they won't come out in numbers next turn, and if one comes out the grenade will take him down while we have time to deploy.
A floater indeed exits the UFO and gets taken out by the proximity grenade. Another floater shoots at us from north west. We'll likely be able to spot him with mutual surprise easy and snipe him down. Keanu takes him out on first shot. 84 firing accuracy is pretty decent.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/60-16th_ufo_spotter_snipers.png)
We position Jason to hide behind the skyranger and to fly on top of it and look for aliens, hopefully seeing them with mutual surprise so we can snipe them down. Also putting some spotters off to the west to move back and forth to try and detect any oncoming aliens from there before snipers are spotted. Works like a charm, and we can shoot down the rest of the aliens without any aliens getting a shot of.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/62-16th_ufo_score.png)
As we shot it down, few aliens to kill, and no elerium, but a simple fight at least.
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/63-march_score.png)
Excellent score for March, but as our expenses are going up faster than our income, we have a budged deficit. -882.316 dollars.
Everyone is happy except for India and Nigeria that refuse to up our funding, but almost a million extra is more than we were expecting.
As we've researched heavy plasma, we've hung onto 8 heavy plasma guns just to be able to use them in a critical mission like base defense, but with this high deficit we should sell to get above ground. Selling the 8 stored heavy plasma, and the single UFO power source and navi I had saved up for a firestorm, we're back at positive $820.484.
We'll get more of the stuff anyhow. Likely before we need it anyhow.
So, that's 3 months into the operation. We've gotten world decoder coverage so we're now seeing everything happening. We've got two decent assault teams of 16 soldiers each with some armor, laser rifles and even some medikits. We've got plasma cannons for our interceptors, so we can shoot down most craft. Just need to get a few more interceptors and build some more cannons to be able to shoot down most activity if wanted.
The only real lack is not being able to capture a sectoid leader yet. Can't remember going to April before seeing one before. Maybe we'll find an ethereal first.
We're low on money, but we're not in dire need of more. We have a well sized engineering and research crew and quite a few soldiers, and there's no more base facilities critical to build fast.
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/64-17th_ufo_mission.png)
Jungle mission against small scout with snakemen. We saw two snakemen as we deployed in turn 2, but they were close and we managed to shoot them down with the spotters coming out. (Trying to avoid they having time for reaction shots seeing others moving too)
Flying suits on snipers were excellent. Moved them up towards the corner, and as we spotted the aliens they came down one after the other.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/65-17th_ufo_score.png)
Aliens seems to be very fast to move out of their UFOs compared to the original game. I can't remember the last time I thought I had to enter a UFO to flush out the rest. They have typically all exited before I get to it. In the old game, I could sit and press end turn 20 times in a row, and still the aliens were in the UFO waiting for me to enter.
-
2nd of March we finish researching New Fighter Craft. Moving on to New Fighter-Transporter.
5th of March we finish New Fighter-Transporter. Ultimate craft next.
05:00 on the 5th we finish 6 more flying suits. Starting to produce 3 more.
6th of March we see some activity again. Large scout with snakeman on terror mission in Southern Africa, currently over Mongolia. Nice to know where he's going.. Scraming main assault team again.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/66-18th_ufo.png)
It's a jungle mission. Dangerous. They can be hiding lots of places. We're clearing the jungle fairly easily. Flying high we manage to find angles working from pretty far away for our snipers. Also, if we don't manage to kill what we see, they often don't come for us straight away in next turn anyhow.
We position around UFO opening and try to move in and out to spot, but an alien is moving too fast and shoots Tom. He is knocked unconscious and we hurry over with a medikit. I think we saved him just before he woud have bled to death. 22 days to recover though. But saved by the suit again.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/67-18th_ufo_score.png)
-
Lastly there's a huge gap in the pacific. There just isn't any good island to put another base on. No French Polynesia on the map? No place for the aliens to land there though, and not a typical area for them to fly. Don't expect the whole to be significant at all.
Who need islands for building bases? 8) ;D
-
Oh.. Crap.. Quoted saying "the whole".. I guess I have to start proofreading before I push post ;D
-
And suddenly we spot the first medium+ sized UFO (except for the terror UFOs seen). Harvest mission this time. And floaters.. So I guess there'll only be snakemen and floaters this month. Should have skipped a few sectoid scouts first month to get to a larger sectoid ship then..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/68-19th_ufo_medium.png)
As it's a bigger ship than normal, we'll send the main team again. Looks to be a day mission.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/69-19th_ufo_start.png)
A rough start. We spot 3 aliens looking straight into the skyranger. Two on the roof and one behind window in second floor. Thankfully we primed a smoke grenade before opening the door. If we just drop it on the floor and await the smoke, I'm hoping they won't see us anymore.
Smoke dropped, turn ended.. They lost line of sight, but one of them moved towards us, but we thankfully shot him down with a reaction shot before he could get a shot off. We forgot that we hadn't dropped smoke on ground level yet and moved a tile out, but thankfully no reaction shots. We move back in and drop smoke downwards too..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/69-19th_ufo_guarding_door1.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/69-19th_ufo_guarding_door2.png)
We have now cleared everything outside the UFO (hopefully). Guarding the doors. Having a spotter moving closer to the door and returning each turn, hopefully spotting anyone moving out in our turn. Though if they come out and move in the right direction, they can get to our troops in one turn. But hopefully they'll shoot at the closest one if so, which should be a spotter.
Heh.. Exactly. Pressed end turn, and a floater moved out and shot George dead in one shot. With his 20 bravery, 33 reaction and 55 accuracy, it's not a big loss though.. Should we await them coming out of the UFO or storm it?
Decided to camp the entrances for now. Suddenly Will dies too. He had gotten friendly laser fire and I missed that he had fatal wounds. Has had fatal wounds for many many turns, so just my fault that I didn't use medpac.. Grr.. Should get a warning. Easy to miss..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/70-19th_ufo_score.png)
The leader came out too. We saw it was a leader and from turn timer it sounded likely he was the last guy. Wondered if we should try to stun him, but as he was out in the open that would be dangerous with stunrods. I'd rather want to stun a sectoid leader though. Doesn't help us with a non-sectoid leader without a commander.
George and Will died. They were fairly expendable at least..
Not long after, we see a similar craft. Another harvester with floaters going to North Africa. It's currently over Mongolia, but will reach North Africa early in the night. We decide to shoot it down so we can delay mission until daytime. We can shoot it down safely with our new plasma beams. Also, we only have 12 soldiers to go on mission currently, and we're running out of soldiers I consider expendable :/..
It's only our 3rd crash site.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/71-20th_ufo_start.png)
It's a desert mission which suits us fine. But what is Harrison doing first in the Skyranger? He's definately not expendable with 50 bravery, 60 reactions and 62 firing accuracy. That's pretty good.. Better be careful. Dropping smoke at level 1 first.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/72-20th_ufo_stupid.png)
What??.. There's smoke over there?.. Lets turn around and look the other way.. Stupid aliens :)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/73-20th_ufo_score.png)
The desert have hills, including a nice one facing the UFO entrances, which I could hide behind and pop up to spot aliens with mutual surprise.. So we managed this one fine without casualties.. Wasn't inside this UFO either..
-
Destroyed a very small UFO going to South Africa around 14:00 April 8th.
9th of April we finish construction of second hangar in Weinan and Great Falls.. We decide we'll build a 3rd just in case, as they're cheap and takes a long time to build, and cost little maintenance. We also hire 20 soldiers in the remaining 4 bases (except Carney in Antarctica that hasn't built a living quarter yet) and adds on another 4 in the existing 2 bases wit soldiers. I guess we should try to equip some soldiers everywhere to be able to have some base defense.. And we have money to spare currently.
11th of April and we finish researching Ultimate Craft. Would be nice to have one, so we decide to cut short production of flying suits so we can start building one around 02:00 when the current one is finished. No real point in prioritizing researching alien origins immediately as we have no leader nor commander present. So lets research the small launcher with stun bomb first, so capturing one later will be simpler. Putting 100 on launcher and 50 on the bomb, as I assume it's simpler to research the ammo. As we're doing both anyhow, starting them in parallel should lead to a bit less wasted effort.
Starting building Avenger at 02:00.. Can only use 64 engineers as it takes up a lot of space in the workshop. That'll take 22 days to produce, but we'll finish another workshop in 9 days, so we can possibly speed it up so we can finish in April.
12th of April, all the new recruits came in. Now we have quite a job preparing them.
-
We have way too little weapons for all of these soldiers, but to get a start we're dividing what we have.
- We've got 4 heavy plasma and 14 clips for each base.
- We've got 4 laser pistols and 1 laser rifle for each of the 4 bases not having a skyranger team. (Skyranger teams have 14 laser rifles each)
- And we're buying 11 regular rifles with 22 clips, 30 smoke and 30 proximity grenades for all the 4 bases not being geared.
That should give them some starting gear to hopefully make it possible to survive a base attack if it comes. Will try to get them some armor and more laser rifles, medi kits and the like when we have time.
15th of April we finish researching the small launcher and the bomb. Nice. Researching alien grenade next. We have stored up 42 of them, so is nice gear to split among bases for base defense. We're typically saving them for a rainy day when we face highly armored aliens anyhow. Equipping the San Marino team with two small launchers. The Weinan team have no alien containment facility so they have little use for it.
16th of April and decoders detect terror mission.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/74-4th_terror_ufo_spotted.png)
It's currently over Australia. Will we be able to intercept it and shoot it down so we don't have to fight a terror mission with civilians? These are snakemen, so they'll be having chryssalid units too, which complicate matters. San Marion team will fight it.. Equipping all with flying suits to be able to stay safe from the chryssalid. Phew.. We manage to intercept and shoot it down. Thus we can await morning before we fight it, and we have saved all the civilians, and we can get UFO parts in the loot too. I guess there will be a leader too on the mission. If we detect him, we can see if we can stun him to get closer to final mission.
Before we've started the mission, we turn to 17th of April where we invent Alien Grenade. Lets start researching Alien Origins to get that out of the way.
Just as we're about to attack the crashed terror ship, we get this report:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/75-21th_ufo_very_large_spotted.png)
Oooh.. The first very large UFO we've seen. Currently close to the north pole. This one I think is likely to carry a commander. However, if I'm to capture him I need to use the main assault team, as San Marino is the only base with alien containment. If I'm doing that though, that means the Weinan team has to take on the crashed terror UFO with Cryssalids.. Eew.. The Weinan team has 5 flying suits which will come in handy though.
Shooting down the very large UFO is not doable with current crafts, so taking it on later is not an option either. I think Weinan will reach terror UFO while still daylight and before crash site is done. And I think main assault team has fuel to go after the very large UFO instead, so lets give it a shot.
-
We're facing the very large UFO first. We're landing in the southwestern end of the map. Noone in sight, but that can quickly change. We're facing floaters so they can be anywhere.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/76-21th_ufo_start.png)
It's an abduction mission, so I guess no terror units? We'll see. The floaters terror unit isn't all that anyhow. We drop a live grenade on the floor and picks up another one, primes it and throws it down. Lets ensure we don't flop the exit.
We move one to each side, using extra TUs in flight suits to get down. We don't see any, so when Uma goes out, she decides to go up a level above the smoke, and immediately we see 3 enemies. Mutual surprise there. Got no reaction shots from the side thankfully.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/77-21th_popping_above_smoket.png)
Ryan moves out and shoots the two floaters, Colin follows and take out the beast, and Uma went on top of the skyranger and looked east without seeing any more enemies. We see no more enemies, so we deploy quite a few soldiers outside.. We hear a lot of doors opening and closing though. Intimidating.
We move towards one of the pillars and get reaction fire from 2 soldiers. We spot them, and manage to snipe them down. A reaper moves towards the skyranger, but it doesn't manage to get close to anyone, and we score a few reaction shots too.
We have moved around the UFO and cleared the outside. Pretty sure nothing is alive outside the UFO as we turn.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/78-21th_outside_cleared.png)
The very large UFO have 8 sided legs which seems perfect to hide behind, as one can walk around a corner without having a deadzone to the side (at least as far as I'm aware of). We should thus safely be able to go around it waiting for a mutual surprise. It's not perfectly safe though, as an alien could walk far enough to spot him with enough TUs left to attack, but there should be a fair chance he'll just be in the middle somewhere not having spotted any..
In addition, I've posted snipers in each corner of the map, which can shoot in between any of the 4 legs. Three of the sides have hedges or walls one can hide behind a bit closer, where i have someone posted that can just fly up a level to see if anyone is around. They are even safer from counterattack in alien turn, as they'll have to move quite far from the entrance to expose the cover. Wonder if I should move away from the pillars and let them do all the spotting. Or I could of course enter the UFO. But then we can have bad luck and having an alien wait just inside. We've seen a lot of aliens panicking including a commander, so hopefully we'll be able to capture him.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/79-21th_outside_score.png)
Lovely to hear aliens berserking without actually shooting because they've previously panicked and dropped their weapon ;D First time I've camped an entire very large UFO I think. What ironman mode makes me do.. The pillars were excellent cover. A few aliens got close, but they were mostly reaction shot before they could do anything.
First very large UFO and no casualties!!.. Yay :) Though the camping tactics was boring..
Sadly, the commander got killed somehow. Either he came out and got reaction shot, or he was killed inside the UFO by some berserking unit. There were at least 3 explosions inside the UFO. At one instance, three aliens got out at the same time too, and I only had mind probe to check two of them, so the commander could have been the third..
Well well.. No commander, but a lot of experience and loot.. And a ton of promotions as we've gotten a lot of soldiers since last mission. Ooh.. And blaster launcher and bomb found among the loot..
-
Not that I'd launch final mission in April, but woulda been interesting getting that commander so I could see if I was ready for it within April. I guess I should bring 2 mind probes next time, and maybe even some expendables and try to enter the UFO.
-
The Weinan team manged well against the terror UFO. Sadly Matt got taken down by a fast moving Chryssalid and became a zombie. We cleared the outside jungle, and then the soldiers in the flying suits flew on top of the UFO exits, and camped it so they could shoot anyone exiting in the back. Worked like a charm.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/80-22th_ufo_score.png)
-
19th of April we finish researching Alien Origins.
20th of April, we finish workshop in San Marino and hire 50 more engineers. I guess we could have done that 3 days ago.
21th of April we finish researching Floater Leader.
23rd of April we get the 50 engineers. Avenger will now complete in less than 6 days, still within April.
23rd 12:00 we get report of medium scout going to southern Africa with floaters for a harvest mission. We will intercept them on the ground. Sadly it'll become a night mission.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/80-23rd_ufo_start.png)
It's a 4x4 tile set, and there's only one tile behind the skyranger, so unlikely that aliens is looking into it. Just dropping smoke on level 0 as our two front fighters don't have flying suits and will dump directly to level 0 when leaving..
There's many floaters around, and one of them manage to shoot Gal, which will sadly have to spend 40 days in the hospital to heal. But she survived barely, and with a med-kit we manage to stabilize her until mission was done.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/81-23rd_ufo_score.png)
25th of April we research The Martian Solution. 5 days remaining of April. If we had managed to capture that commander we could actually have started final mission within April, even though I wasn't really shooting for a fast game. Think finishing in March should be doable if focusing on it. Anyhow.. Not in a rush here.. Going to try and get to psionics before final mision I think.. Researching the blaster bomb and launcher first now.
28th of April, 18:00 hours we produce our first Avenger. 21:30 there's an inbound large scout harvester into Southern Africa. This time it looks like it may become a day mission, so flying down the team again.. Hmm.. The harvester never landed.. Strange..
At the end of April, we now have interceptors in Great Falls and Weinan with plasma beams (we should have awaited buying them until now though, to save us 1.2 mill). We have built an avenger, and considering whether to move it or the skyranger to Great Falls base to make space for another craft build.
We've researched everything we really need. Though the blaster launcher we're currently researching will also make the final mission trivial, and of course we missed the commander, so Cydonia or Bust is still missing.
We're going bankrupt..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/82-april_score.png)
We really need to get money into the bank. If we keep current expenses, we'll need a ~4.7 mill positive balance before next month to stay in positive range, and we need 4.5 millions more to get back to zero now. Lets see what we can sell. Until we're green we'll redirect research to laser cannon and put engineers to work on something helping to pay our bills instead.
We decided to sell our heavy plasma storage, and that actually put us back to 1.7 mill positive ;D.. But knowing that funding don't keep up with maintenance, we'll not stop until we have 5 mill positive bankroll.
First mission in May is a snakeman terror mission in Europe with a medium scout. It's soon day in Europe so we'll attempt engaging it on the ground. I really hope the other activity this month is Sectoid..
Just a few minutes later, we see the next mission. A small scout on alien retaliation mission in australasia. Hmm.. The avenger might be able to get down there in time, but if it shoots it down, we won't get to fight the Ethereal. We'll try to head down there anyhow and test out the new machinery.. Destroyed the Ethereal UFO. Another one will likely be incoming later. I think we'll buy a cannon or two for the Avenger, so we can shoot down even a small UFO later, so we can get to psionics.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/83-24th_ufo_lineup.png)
What chance do the snakemen have.. None at all.. There was a couple of snakemen in the closest house, so we shot it to pieces with laser rifles :).. When we have 100 laser shots to try and kill what we spot, it's hard to survive as an alien..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/84-24th_ufo_score.png)
-
Yet another floater UFO
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/85-25th_ufo_camping.png)
After clearing the surroundings, we're camping the exit. Training reaction and rifle accuracy.. Camping exit above and behind seems like almost a cheating functionality of the flying suit..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/85-25th_ufo_result.png)
-
4th of May we finish researching Heavy Laser..
6th of May we see a harvester with floaters going to southern Africa.. Going down there again.. Thankfully it's a day mission.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/86-26th_ufo_start.png)
Quickly spots first alien. Mel takes the chance of taking him down himself.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/87-26th_ufo_around.png)
With 8 sides to the UFO we can move around it with mutual surprise if we spot anything..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/88-26th_ufo_camping.png)
But that tree was even simpler to use as a hideout for a spotter that can just pop above it. The people all up on the top of the UFO don't see the alien if he's close to the vessel.. But if the alien starts moving north he will get reaction shots up there and he'll have to use some TU. No alien had TU left to fire up there. After spotting one, the people on the roof could just move forwards one tile and shoot them down if they were next to wall.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/89-26th_ufo_score.png)
Another excellent mission. Lots of goodies and noone killed..
-
7th of May, we research laser cannon.. Can start producing it for cash.. But with loot from the last missions, we've now got a cash balance of $8.6 million after selling quite a bit, but far from everything..
Already 0:30 on the 7th we spot another UFO. Still a harvester in Southern Africa.. And I was hoping for another australian mission with ethereals.. I have transferred the avenger down there with cannons, so now I hope to shoot one down even if it's a very small one :)
Well well.. The commander will have to catch some sleep before coordinating that mission..
-
Harrison got shot while we were clearing the outside here, but luckily it wasn't fatal, and he could run over to Colin which had a medkit. He'll be out of action for 38 days though. We also had another injury caused by friendly fire, but the armor stopped most of it, so it was a minor injury, but still required medical attention from Colin.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/90-27th_ufo_camping.png)
The houses outside the door was really useful. Destroy the roof and we had excellent cover to jump out of with the flying suits to check if anyone got out. Not visible above, but there was a hedge and a house on the other side too. Not close enough to see what happened at the door, but it would spot the alien moving westwards.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/91-27th_ufo_score.png)
Another excellent result.
-
7th of May.. We spot another UFO..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/92-28th_ufo_vlarge_spotted.png)
Yay.. Another shot at capturing a commander hopefully..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/93-28th_ufo_vlarge_camped.png)
Camping the UFO. Having 5 small launchers and 8 stunrods.. This seemed to work really well.. Though a bit boring waiting quite a few turns verifying that noone is below.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/93-28th_ufo_vlarge_commander.png)
Yay.. The commander is right in front of us.. We actually take him down with a stun rod.. Next turn we carry him away into safety just in case there should be an explosion here..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/94-28th_ufo_score.png)
Noone managed to see me hugging the wall one level above ground, and when we found someone they had typically expended all their TUs getting there, ,so we could easily shoot them down.. The risky bit is clearing around, but that worked out ok..
Pausing launcher and bomb and starting researching the commander..
A bit later a terror ship comes for Southern Africa.. We intercept it with interceptor, and takes a day mission with the Weinan team as the main team is still regrouping after the last mission.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/95-29th_ufo_start.png)
The start isn't promising. We've forgotten to prime a smoke grenade prior to starting mission. We take a chance having Russel trying to shoot the snakeman down, but he misses too much and the snakeman shoots him dead..
Later in the mission, Karl tries to make a run for it to get behind the UFO entrance, but is surprised by an alien coming out, and he's a gonner too.. Sad.. Well.. Other than that, we manage..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/96-29th_ufo_score.png)
-
9th of May, Floater Commander has been interrogated, researching Cydonia or Bust..
10th of May, at 05:00 we see an Australian mission popping up. We scramble the Avenger with it's cannons now stationed in Australia.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/97-30th_ufo_on_the_way.png)
We shoot it down on Tasmania. Lets see if we can get to them before the wildlife there kills'em ;)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/97-30th_ufo_shot_down.png)
We pick up the main assault team and send them on the way.. But while they're travelling we get a new report. The Weinan team might be able to catch them while landed, but it looks like that would be a night mission. I think we'll just shoot it down, and let them handle it a bit later.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/98-31th_ufo_spotted.png)
-
It woulda been a lot easier facing of a sectoid mission with a single sectoid leader able to do psionic attacks.. Now we're facing Ethereals that have good armor and all of them may attack us with psionics.
As it's the first mission against anything psionic we have no clue who is psionic strong of our soldiers. In a sectoid mission we could have opted for using conventional weapons only, which our armor can handle, but we need decent weapons to get through Ethereals armor.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/99-30th_ufo_mission_start.png)
Until we know who our psi weaklings are, I guess we should try to not end turn holding a weapon. It seems we only use 2 TU to drop a laser rifle, if the value is static that is. Picking it back up is 8 more though.
The start looks ok. We are looking up towards the northwest corner, so we can get our back against the map border fairly easily at least. We start of dropping smoke at ground level. Ignoring level 1. Only expecting Ethereals to be able to see in from the side from the east, and our scout in power suit that drops to level 0 immediately should hopefully be able to expedite any..
It's also an open question who to shoot and who to try and stun. It would be very nice to stun one early so we knew we had one to interrogate, but the last one will be a lot easier to stun than the first one we see. How many aliens might we be facing? We shot the UFO down, so some might have died in the crash. How many do we dare shoot before having to stun the next?
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/100-30th_ufo_deployed.png)
We leave two soldiers in the skyranger and move the rest out, dropping their laser rifles before ending the turn. Oh.. We forgot on the two first scouts going out. There's two buildings here, and north of the eastern building there's hedges around the tile covering it up, so there may be many aliens within 20 tiles for all we know..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/101-30th_ufo_colin_panicked.png)
I think we got many psionic attacks against us, but we only noticed Colin panicking. An alien moved ouf of the whole in the wall we created and around the corner. Noone shot at us.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/101-30th_ufo_colin_panicked.png)
Nice position for small launcher. Hopefully we can stun him, and then we can kill of anyone else we see.. Tough bastard.. At least we have many small launchers.. After 5 small launcher shots we finally stun him.. One missed, at least 2 were direct hits.. Well well.. At least he's down. Lets hope he doesn't wake up before we've cleared the surrounding area..
Hmm.. We don't always manage to end up with enough TU to drop weapons.. This is a dangerous mission..
We spot another alien and kill it. But when we spot a third we don't have anyone with TUs to shoot at it, so we just move a bit back and wait. In the alien turn another alien shows up out of the house to the east where we have blown out some walls, and shoots Charlize. Thankfully her armor took the hit. Colin is now under alien control, but he don't have any lethal weapons on him. He may have a stun rod or small launcher in his backpack though.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/102-30th_ufo_sw_corner_looks_clear.png)
The southwestern corner looks likely to be clear of aliens. At leat no doors that have opened and we've seen a lot of the area..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/103-30th_ufo_looking_east.png)
The second alien that walked out of the house we stunned too.. This one took "only" two small launcher hits. Good to be able to have stunned at least 2 just in case an explosion or something happen. They are a bit too close though. Once we've cleared a bit more we'll carry one west I guess..
That's 2 stunned and 2 shot so far.. Looks to be just a 4x4 tile map, and I guess we see the outline of the ufo in the tile north of the northeastern corner. So far so good...
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/104-30th_ufo_score.png)
Phew.. That was actually it.. Ending turn and we were done.. Switching research to Ethereal Soldier.. Just after we launched to go home, our interceptor caught up with the large scout on terror mission in Europe and shot it down. Sending Weinan team to handle it, as the San Marino team is still over Australia and may not be back to fight that mission in daylight..
11th of May we finish researching Ethereal Soldier. Psi-Lab next.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/105-31th_ufo_mission_start.png)
No issue finding the 31th UFO at least. We move out in smoke and start clearing the area. What really bites me is that when we spot an alien, and we try to snipe it down from above, one of the snipers manage to miss big twice, both times hitting Steven in the back, and end up killing him. Is it possible? When hitting a friendly target way of the path to the alien, one should think one thought twice about where to point that gun.
Steven have been a valued member, been transferred to Weinan to help out. Have amassed 15 kills. He wasn't a brave soul, but he was good at his job..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/106-31th_ufo_mission_score.png)
With all the loot we have amassed from the latest missions we're now just above 20 million in available credits, and we have sold far from everything. Each of our main 6 bases now have 6 heavy plasma + 18 clips, 1 blaster launcher with 4 bombs, 10 alien grenades, 1 laser rifle, 4 laser pistols, 30 smoke and 30 proximity grenades and 11 regular rifles with 22 clips. We haven't researched all the bits yet though.
I guess we should send a bit extra to Alice Springs, as there's a current retaliation mission there. Sending another 10 heavy plasma and 20 clips over there..
-
13th of May we spot another retaliation scout in Australia.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/107-32th_ufo_spotted.png)
What to do with it? Fighting Ethereals is dangerous business, and we do not know psi strength of soldiers yet. Maybe we should just shoot it down over water. Hope this doesn't end up in an actual base defense against a battleship full of Ethereal soldiers. They would control the heck out of my soldiers.
We end up shooting it down over water, and while we remember, sending 2 plasma beams for avenger down to Australia.
15th of May we finish research of Psi-Lab.. Sadly too late to finish building them within May, so we won't know our soldiers psionic strength before end of July.
Building a psi-lab in all of the 6 first bases. Starting a hyperwave decoder in the 7th Antarctica base, which just built it's first living quarter, and we can thus hire 20 soldiers there.. The psi-lab wasn't terribly expensive to build, and we don't have a lot we need the money for at the moment, so maybe we should just add another one in each base to be able to train all 20 soldiers at the same time. Well.. We started the first, but it would actually have ideal to wait until June 5th or something, to just make it before end of month. Helps us nothing to finish the build early in June. But what done is not forgot at least, and we don't need to remember to reserve the money.
-
We have likely won this game long time ago. Except for psionic bits, we have a lot we can show up on the final mission with. But lets just expand a bit more to be sure, and at least get to where we know our troops psionic strength.
Have been quiet from activity for a while now. 20th of May we finish researching Cydonia or Bust. Going back to Blaster Launcher and Bomb.. We can now start the final mission anytime we want. We have the Avenger, and we know where to go. 21st we research blaster bomb. Setting all to research the launcher. The 25th we finish researching the launcher itself. It's gonna be a while before we can use a Psi-Amp, but lets research it as we have nothing else we really are waiting for..
On the 25th, there's another large scout on retaliation mission in Australasia.. We don't really want to fight Ethereals without knowing psi strength, so lets just shoot them down into the ocean..
28th of May we research Psi-Amps. Not really needing anymore yet, we start on motion scanner, and I guess we'll research plasma pistols and rifles afterwards with their clips. At this time we could cut down on our research team if we want to. We're currently paying 4.5 million dollars a month to have them, but as we don't require more tech, we could really dump all. But to be able to research a bit, we could dump at least 100. But as we do have the money, lets just keep them for this month, and rather do it next month, so we can clear out that list a bit..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/108-33th_ufo_spotted_alien_base.png)
28th of May we spot something interesting.. An alien base mission seems to be starting in North Africa.. That means many large UFOs we can exploit for loot. Looks like this one is going to be a night mission unless I shoot it down. If I shoot it down, I guess I will delay the base mission a bit, but if I have understood it correctly, it won't abort it. A large scout appeared just after. We shot down both so we can handle them in daytime.
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/109-34th_ufo_start.png)
The first issue isn't much of an issue.. We spot an alien from the start, so we drop smoke on skyranger level.. Once we do deploy in turn 3 I think (probably lay down smoke on ground level in turn 2), we see some snakemen, and when we have shot them down the mission is over..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/110-34th_ufo_score.png)
Small UFO, not so many survivors and small map.. And not much loot left either..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/111-35th_ufo_start.png)
Jees.. Two snakemen facing into the skyranger. Good we have a pre-primed smoke grenade to drop at skyranger level.. We turn, but it's not enough. While we can't see the snakemen, one of them is still spotting us.. Does the game calculate sight, so he sees through the level below the smoke and see our feed short into the smoke, while we with eyes high see too much through the smoke so we can't see them?
By pure luck the alien misses us, but this coulda been a total disaster.. With two pre-primed grenades maybe I could have managed to throw one out without getting a reaction shot.. But I think I would have gotten one against me if I tried.
In the real world, you wouldn't land in the middle of the aliens.. I understand they want to have small maps, but I really don't think it makes sense that aliens are aiming inside the skyranger as its hatch opens. Then it wouldn't land there.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/112-35th_ufo_score.png)
30th of May we invent the Motion Scanner.. What should we research then? Base defenses seems unneeded. We can hopefully defend with soldiers for loot.. Plasma pistols and rifles seems a bit meaningless when we have heavy plasma available, which also is much easier to recover clips for. I guess we'll take fusion missile and get to fusion defense in case we see the need for base defense later on..
At 11:00 31st of May we see a snakeman terror ship approaching Europe.. This'll be the last UFO in May I'm guessing. We'll of course try to shoot it down to avoid a terror mission.. Hmm.. We never managed to catch up with it, and it never landed.. Strange..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/113-May_score.png)
Everyone seems to be pleased with our performance..
-
Just 3 hours into June, we spot 2 new UFOs.. First a small scout on alien retaliation mission in Europe, with Ethereals.. Secondly, a medium scout on terrir mission in Australasia.. We send the Weinan team down after the last one in hopes of getting a ground day mission. If we don't we have the avenger there for plan B.. We'll send an interceptor after the retaliation scout in hopes of shooting it down before it sees base..
We manage to shoot down the small scout, but the terror scout didn't land before it was night.. We accepted a night mission to get some more loot this time..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/114-35th_ufo_start.png)
A night mission always look scary.. But at least we're facing the map edge so noone is pointing their guns straight into the ranger..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/115-35th_ufo_scoret.png)
Finally a mission against sectoids.. The house next to the deployment site here housed 4-5 sectoids though. We blew out a corner just to look in.. Saw one. Shot one. Saw another, shot another, saw two more.. We tried with a grenade, but one of them survived the grenade, shot past the flying suit closest and killed Nicolas in his personal armor..
Hrmpf.. About time the entire Weinan team had flying/power suits.. We created quite a lot last month but have divided them among the bases. Should have outfitted this team fully first..
-
Alien Retaliation with Ethereal scout in Australia still.. Thought maybe they had moved on as they appeared in Europe.. Maybe I need to get to final mission before my bases disappear.. Ironman and base defense in main base sounds like high stakes.. We shoot the scout down over water.. Will like to avoid Ethereal missions until I know psionic strength of soldiers..
5th of June and we receive interceptors in Amazonas and Harare.. Now we have fighters with plasma beams in all 6 bases..
I feel we need to take another look at our soldier pool. At least so we have 14 known dudes on each of the bases with an assault team..
In Europe, the newest recruits are Shailene, Hudson, Hugo, Jet, Christian and Chris. That makes the full San Marino team now:
Starting stats Current stats
TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str PSt PSk TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str PSt PSk Score
[Max cap*] 60 70 40 60 60 70 80 40 40 100 24 80 100 60 100 100 120 120 70 100 100+
Mel 59 59 36 10 37 63 68 27 34 74 81 52 10 38 74 75 27 58 6
Ryan 57 65 25 10 38 70 80 31 34 67 90 48 10 38 90 81 31 61 6
Hugo 54 66 34 40 50 53 64 29 23 55 66 38 40 50 54 66 29 23 5.5
Hudson 54 58 38 30 60 56 68 34 37 6
Jet 57 53 31 50 30 62 73 27 27 61 66 43 50 34 66 79 27 35 7
Uma 60 57 26 50 32 60 53 27 37 70 74 38 50 35 69 55 27 47 7
Christian 58 55 34 20 59 64 54 28 31 7
Jason 58 65 34 50 47 43 67 26 30 76 88 53 50 52 54 75 26 53 7
Shailene 54 57 26 60 50 46 56 28 38 55 62 30 60 50 47 57 28 40 6
Colin 57 64 38 50 50 42 62 28 21 74 81 48 50 51 49 64 28 43 7
Chris 50 64 30 40 57 60 56 33 27 6.5
Keanu 50 53 30 10 49 70 58 20 40 75 94 60 10 51 93 58 20 66 7
Tom 51 58 25 50 44 67 65 27 29 62 79 42 50 45 75 65 27 43 7
Charlize 58 40 40 40 58 41 62 23 25 74 71 52 40 61 51 64 23 50 7
Harrison 50 58 32 50 57 53 80 37 20 77 85 56 50 65 64 84 37 45 7
Gal 53 44 39 50 57 61 77 27 37 66 65 45 50 57 68 80 27 53 8
Daisy 51 66 38 60 54 68 68 27 20 62 85 53 60 54 74 68 27 44 8
Christopher 53 56 35 60 54 66 73 27 24 68 76 52 60 55 74 73 27 51 8
Arnold 57 65 30 60 60 45 77 40 22 76 87 49 60 65 55 78 40 54 8
Sylvester 58 59 40 40 59 67 75 40 23 63 68 42 40 59 72 75 40 36 9
In Weinan the new recruits are Ben, Jeremy, Will, Charles, George, Vin, Roger, Famke & Lucy.
The full Weinan team is then:
Starting stats Current stats
TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str PSt PSk TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str PSt PSk Score
[Max cap*] 60 70 40 60 60 70 80 40 40 100 24 80 100 60 100 100 120 120 70 100 100+
Ben 51 49 25 30 36 57 60 21 32 4
Jeremy 50 51 28 10 35 70 68 25 20 4.5
Will 52 41 34 40 31 59 78 30 30 5
Charles 60 54 31 20 55 40 54 28 27 5.5
George 57 62 35 10 50 48 74 25 24 5.5
Halle 60 69 27 50 33 46 73 37 37 65 76 33 50 34 48 78 37 49 5
Vin 52 46 36 60 36 70 51 37 20 5.5
Roger 59 46 40 60 37 63 54 33 37 6
Famke 52 57 32 60 59 44 64 29 30 6
Lucy 50 42 40 10 56 68 54 27 40 7
Jennifer 57 52 30 30 43 52 74 24 32 64 71 41 30 48 63 77 24 37 6
Michael 53 42 26 30 50 53 63 22 40 58 63 37 30 55 59 64 22 55 6
Liam 57 63 31 10 46 61 50 26 30 70 74 44 10 48 68 50 26 51 7
Denzel 52 56 36 30 54 60 69 35 32 56 70 47 30 58 66 69 35 45 7
Eric 58 57 36 60 34 60 75 27 37 62 64 40 60 34 61 76 27 39 6
Sigourney 59 65 34 30 51 64 56 27 20 63 70 36 30 55 66 56 27 27 7.5
Kate 58 51 37 60 46 70 77 20 40 70 73 52 60 46 80 81 20 55 8
Michelle 60 42 39 10 55 67 55 31 35 76 73 55 10 56 84 58 31 57 8
Dolph 53 61 33 60 51 67 62 38 26 56 61 36 60 52 70 64 38 27 7.5
Bruce 58 61 35 60 58 69 58 34 32 63 73 41 60 63 73 58 34 34 9
-
6th of June we research fusion missiles.. Hmm.. We can now build Hovertank/Launcher.. That might be a nice one to have.. Though a soldier with a blaster launcher takes up far less space. Fusion Defense next..
7th of June 22:00 we detect large scout heading to Australasia for terror mission. Scrambling Weinan team again to intercept it. A bit later we see a terror ship with snakemen coming for Europe. Better try to shoot down that one..
We end up shooting down the terror UFO, awaiting a bit to engage it to get day mission, and we manage to attack sectoid scout in Australia on the ground..
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/116-36th_ufo_start.png)
A start towards the map corner. Buildings close though, so we gotta watch the windows. There were a couple of sectoids in the southern building, but none in the eastern.
Managed ok. Kept the dudes in personal armor within the skyranger until we had cleared the immediate area and they could move up on the roof. They didn't join the action though. Eventually camped the last aliens sitting above their entrance..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/116-36th_ufo_score.png)
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/117-37th_ufo_start.png)
We were happy we started towards map border. We dropped smoke grenade and waited for it to go of.. And while we are waiting, a Chryssalid just walks up the ramp and turns Mel into a zombie.. Damnit.. That's it for Mel sadly. He was a good soldier, who in all his action had trained his rifling accuracy from 63 to 78, but positioned in front due to his low bravery and not so great reactions.
There were quite a few terror units around here.. Luckily most of our soldiers had flying suits making them invulnerable to those once they got out of the Skyranger.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/118-37th_ufo_score.png)
Annoying having a Captain dying, but as he was standing in front of ramp, he was by definition expendable.. But a bit sad that I feel we had nothing we could have done to prevent it.
-
10th of June, Carney finishes it's hyperwave decoder. We know have decoder coverage everywhere aliens may land, and on most of the ocean too.. We could drop an 8th base on Hawaii to reduce the biggest ocean gap, but shouldn't really matter. Not spending money on that now at least..
02:00 on the 10th another Ethereal retaliation scout in Australia.. We shoot it down over water again..
On the 11th 07:30 there's a small scout on infiltration mission in North America.. Launching interceptor there.. Does that mean we're doomed to lose US as a funding nation? Destroyed it.. I read that infiltration missions cannot be stopped, only delayed..
12th of May we finish researching Fusion Defense.. Grabbing Grav Shield next..
13th of May, 12:00 and we get Ethereal scout on retaliation mission in Europe. Sunk that in the sea too..
14th of May, at 14:00 we finish building a second avenger.
16th of May we research Grav Shield. I guess we can just research plasma rifles and pistols..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/119-38th_ufo_supply_ship.png)
Not been much UFO activity in June, but the 19th we see a Supply Ship in North Africa.. Haven't seen an alien base mission since the scout, so I assume there is no base yet, so I guess this is the first ship of many that will now create a base. How many will there be?
There seems to be some issue that a troop transport done with a mission has to return to base, so each of our transporters will only be able to do one mission if we're trying to attack them on the ground. We can shoot some down to handle them later though..
We have an avenger ready in San Marino now, so we are able to mount two attack groups from there, 10 soldier strong each, each having 7 armors..
So far we've seen 2 supply ships and one battleship going to northern Africa. We've split the San Marino team in two, trying to share equipment, and are flying in the Weinan team. Additionally we have an Avenger in Australia, so we could summon a team from there, but they're all rookies.
We're sending the Weinan team after the battleship, as it's has a full 14 man crew fully armored.. Letting the two San Marino teams take a supply ship each..
At 21:00, before any of the 3 ships have landed, we spot a battleship with Ethereal's on retaliation mission in Australia.. Yikes.. If they attack the rookies over there, we might have a hard time winning. I guess we wan't make a base assault team of the Aussie soldiers.. Wonder if they have spotted the base or not.. We have shot down all their scouts at fair distance from the base, so I'm hoping not.. Maybe it's just a huge scout..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/120-base.png)
The first supply ship lands, and we send the skyranger San Marino crew over there to fight it. Sadly a night mission, but too early in the night to be able to wait until daybreak..
We throw around flares everywhere and manage to clear outside unhurt. We have left the senior command without armor, so they are moving out only in cleared areas to sniper positions.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/121-39th_ufo_camp1.png)
The supply UFO seems a bit more tricky to camp than many of the others.. Trying out this way..
We've hidden a guy in flying suit up on top of the UFO. Each turn he'll move two turns forwards, turn right, lower down two levels, and then return. This uses 50 TU and only 8 stamina (as going up and down costs no stamina). Where he stands, the enemy has to go quite a bit out from the ship to spot him, and when he moves he's likely to spot the aliens when at the bottom level, and being hidden one level above, so he can go back up immediately without giving them a chance for reaction fire. Then he gets out of the way, in case some of the snipers miss.
The snipers here are 29 tiles from the entrance, but more important, at least 24 tiles from where the spotted on the roof will have seen last turn. That's a bit short, and we were hoping to put them further back.. (I guess we should have moved them a bit north.)
The idea is that the spotted shows whomever is getting close, and then they can snipe him down..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/121-39th_ufo_camp2.png)
There's a similar setup on the other side, though with only 2 snipers.. But it was a tight fit here, so we were expecting most of the aliens to leave the other way..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/121-39th_ufo_camp3.png)
We have put out two other guys to spot the area behind where the spotter comes down. If an alien is moving so far that he'd end up behind a spotter, we'll notice, rather than later being attacked by him..
This worked out pretty well.. Due to the a bit too short distance to the sniper team southeast, they got the chance for some reaction rolls, so they trained a bit of reaction, but that could also have created a death.. I first tried to have the spotters a bit closer to the ledge, but they were spotted once, so I decided to hide them a bit more. Nobody spotted them from there of the remaining dudes..
Took some time before all the aliens left though. Probably played until turn 50..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/122-39th_ufo_score.png)
There.. Elerium storage refilled.. And good is that.. We use a ton to create flying suits.. Two more missions coming up.. Sadly night missions too..
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/122-40th_ufo_score.png)
The next supply ship landed in jungle territory, which had more hiding places for the snakemen.. I think an eager Jet explored a bit too far, being seen by an alien outside flare lightning. Critical mistake and he got shot dead..
After that we managed to clear the area and camped the UFO.
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/123-41th_ufo_start.png)
We started pretty close to northeastern corner of the map, and the UFO is just next to us.. Establishing a spotter/sniper crew for the opening behind the pillars facing the skyranger ramp. Marked soldier will be spotting to see if anyone tries to sneak through on top, and the one just behind him will go down to spot anything coming from the UFO ramp.. Then we have 3 snipers located behind them that can hopefully target what is spotted, hopefully before target spots them. Looks a bit weak though, as aliens will need to be some distance from the middle ramp before they have line of sight, so the visibility gap between them once the alien comes into line of sight isn't huge.
The remaining crew is going south to try and clear the area around. Forest at night.. Not an easy job to clear it without casualties.
We also saw a Chryssalid.. Didn't think alien base missions had terror units, but I guess battleships maybe always have them? I guess the two guys without flying suits need to be especially careful.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/124-41th_ufo_spotting.png)
Thankfully we managed to spot these 3 in our own turn, with enough TU left to shoot them down.. In their turn, a Chryssalid has moved towards us, but no plasma shots were fired.
After some rounds clearing the area south, we have established sniper outposts on 3 exits:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/125-41th_ufo_se_camp.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/125-41th_ufo_sw_camp.png)
The fourth corner is in the corner of the map.. We'll just leave it be, though we must be careful we don't get surprised if anyone comes through there.. Especially not killing the spotter down southwest. That's Michelle, and she's a great soldier, so not really one for the spotter job.. I guess we should find someone to switch her with. Maybe position 2 up here too, as we've done northeast, so someone can spot up the side each turn..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/125-41th_ufo_mid.png)
-
Stay vigilant.. Tempting to just move spotters down and up and end turn, but also turning all the way around one see sneaky bastards like this one..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/126-41th_ufo_sneaky_bastard.png)
This Chryssalid was one tile past what I saw when I went down, and if I hadn't turned around I would have missed him.. Hrmpf.. He could take a punch.. We shot and shot, and while we missed quite a lot, we probably had like 6-7 hits before he went down.. No scream either, so he's likely stunned.. Watch out..
It's going great though. We've seen so many panicked messages from aliens, that not many of them can actually still carry a gun. Also seen berserkers not creating a sound likely because they have no gun either..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/127-41th_ufo_score.png)
Finished around turn 40.. Yay.. That's quite a bit of loot for us..
-
04:46 on the 20th we see a terror UFO coming for Australia, so we shoot it down the minute it is over land.. Got the option of fighting the mission immediately with all the rookies on that avenger. Hadn't really planned for that, so opted for no..
They've gotten a lot of heavy plasma down there in case of retaliation mission, but their still lacking armor and some skilled soldiers..
But what to do with the alien base.. Should we just attack it to get rid of it? I guess it may create supply missions which is a nice source of extra loot. On the other hand, we're not exactly lacking. We're basically awaiting knowing psi strength of units, so less missions to fight while we wait might be good too..
We now have a massive 105 heavy plasma guns ;D That's 15 per base, enough to equip 75% of our soldiers. It's also 18 million worth of loot to sell.
Lets take a little inventory and see what we do have and what we should add to base equipment or not.
Euro US Asia Brazil Africa Australia Antarc Total Floor(Total/7)
Laser Rifles 14 1 14 1 1 1 32 4
Motion Scanner 2 0 2 0
Medi-Kit 15 5 15 5 40 5
Heavy Plasma 33 6 38 6 6 16 105 15
- Clips 55 18 74 18 18 32 40 255 36
Blaster Launcher 1 1 6 1 1 1 11 1
- Bomb 8 4 24 4 4 4 48 6
Small Launcher 4 3 7 1
- Bomb 58 18 76 10
Alien Grenade 73 10 24 5 10 10 7 139 19
Elerium-115 288 200 400 100 89 1077 153
Mind Probe 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 8 1
Power Suits 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 13 1
Flying Suits 11 6 12 6 6 5 46 6
Personal Armor 7 7 1
Trying to give all the bases a decent base defense team with gear, we now have quite a bit.. Divided on 7, we have 15 heavy plasma, 4 laser rifles and 1 blaster launcher per base. That's quite a nice set of weaponry for our 20 soldiers. We also have a small launcher with stun bomb, though we are in no need of more live aliens.. Though barring anything else to research, I guess it would be fun to get some more UFOpedia entries in.
We've got less than half of the armor we'd like though. Flying suits take a lot of Elerium to build. Currently we've started production of 20 more, which will consume a massive 300 Elerium. We don't have Elerium yet to make flying suits for everyone. Will take a long time to produce too for that matter. Power Suits also have almost as good armor values though, and cost only a third of the Elerium, so making power suits for the masses sounds easier. We can be flying suit heavy for the assault teams, but power suit heavy for the base defense teams..
There's of course also the issue of a possible base defense mission happening while an assault team is off base. To feel safe we should really have a bigger team in the bases with assault teams (or reduce the number of soldiers we take on a mission). Having a lot of soldiers on a mission is very useful though. If we spot an alien and have two soldiers that can target it, we might miss and it can kill us next turn. Having three that can shoot him instead makes it a lot less likely that the alien will survive the turn. As for instance in the last battleship mission, the battleship have 4 exits from the center. We had a spotter and 3 snipers on 3 of the exits, and 2 men to cover if anyone tried to escape the back exit. That's 14 men. If we were to send less we would in that mission have 2 instead of 3 snipers for an exit. Which would normally be ok, but with a considerably higher risk of not being able to take out whatever comes out a given turn. If we can't take them out, we have to retreat the spotter and then we no longer have control of the area.
We could just sell all the extra stuff, but lets use it to make decent equipment for all the base defense teams for now.. Will try to give every base the following:
- 15 heavy plasma, 30 heavy plasma clips, 1 blaster launcher, 5 blaster bombs, 1 small launcher, 10 stun bombs, 1 mind probe, 5 medi-kits and 5 laser rifles & 20 alien grenades, and flying suits/power suits for everyone (to start with, 2 power and 6 flying)
We're not totally there yet. We need some medi-kits.. We need some laser rifles, a few grenades, and a lot of armor. The assault teams will of course have priority on armor, so it will take a while before it's out there, but we'll try to split what's left over to give some protection.
-
The terror mission we shot down and delayed got messier than expected.. We took down squad in avenger to fly fast, to prevent team from being away from base long.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/128-42th_ufo_start.png)
We dumped smoke and waited a turn, but then Ryan was mind attacked and ran out of the Avenger, getting reaction shots from cyberdiscs. We eventually managed to clear the outside of the UFO, but there were many cyberdiscs and several sectoids, so we took several hits. Luckily we managed to mend them all with medikits, or the armor took it.. But then trying to camp the UFO, several of our soldiers started to panic, and Charlize was even under alien control a turn. We took several laser shots from own soldiers berserking or being controlled, and decided we just had to go in and kill of that sectoid leader the faster the better..
Within the UFO there were still 3-4 cyberdiscs and some sectoids.. Christian was sadly killed during the combat within the UFO.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/129-42th_ufo_score.png)
The cyberdiscs also exploded, taking out much of the inside of the UFO, which is a likely reason why there wasn't any Elerium there. Though it could also have been destroyed in the crash. Ryan is out for 47 days, Chris for 16 days. Lets hope their psionics skill can still be evaluated.
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/130-43th_ufo_spotted.png)
I guess it's a question of time before they find the base and attacks it.. Not looking forward to a battleship full of Ethereals not even knowing psionic strength in squad, and likely also with a bunch of rookies.. Should we transfer more experienced soldiers down there?
Tempting to say the rookies will have to manage somehow..
26th of June we research plasma rifle. Later in the night we spot a medium scout with sectoids on alien infiltration mission in North America. We scramble US interceptor and shoots it down (over land).. As I understand, shooting down delays mission while attacking while landed does not, and I do want to delay infiltration mission.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/130-44th_ufo_score.png)
Small ufo with sectoids where only a few survived, so fairly easy mission, though one of them had view into the skyranger and fired while waiting for smoke, so now Hudson is out for 32 days.. She did panic a lot against the mind attacks though, so we're guessing she's got a low psionic strength..
June 27th and we research plasma rifle clips too.. Plasma defense next.. Not that we need it..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/131-45th_ufo_spotted.png)
Here we go.. Another supply ship. Think we might earn both loot and score leaving this alien base intact..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/131-45th_ufo_score.png)
And yet another instance of shooting inside Skyranger in alien turn 1, as we are sitting in it waiting for smoke to become active. It is very tempting to start using that option for instant grenades, so it's possible to deploy smoke AND move out first turn, so we have a chance of spotting them before they spot us..
We thus lost Uma which was now positioned up front in the UFO.. We should be more careful to get expendable rookies up front. Uma had a fairly forward position as people in front of her have died, and due to her low 35 reaction score, but now that she had gotten quite a bit of experience, 73 rifle accuracy and 73 time units, I shoulda had some rookies in front instead..
Ich.. Small scout on retaliation mission in North America.. We sure do have some retaliation missions going on..
Four new soldiers are coming to San Marino to fill the ranks. Daniel, Val, Mickey and Jackie.. None very promising.
30th of June 16:00 we shoot down an Ethereal retaliation medium scout above Europe. It's on land so I guess we should make it a mission. Not loving it though..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/131-46th_ufo_score.png)
It did turn out fine though. Only a few failed attempts at psionic attacks.. Helped that it was in daytime in fairly open terrain, so we could spot them from good distance, and kill them, fast as we outnumbered them.. All were outside the UFO too..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/132-june_score.png)
And that marks the end of June.. Everyone happy except Nigeria, so a decent funding increase.. Still we have much higher maintenance than funding income though. Forgot to fire some scientists in front again.. I guess we can get that list of unneeded techs to research even smaller and fire some before next month..
110 soldiers now in psionic training.. On average, should be 11 that is 90+ psi strength. Will be interesting to see who will make the psi team. Expecting next month to be a good month to redistribute soldiers, putting some of the rookies with high psi strength with the assault teams, and leaving some psi weaklings to base defense.
-
It doesn't take long in July before we see some action. We spot 2 UFOs over Australia at the same time. One is a very small retaliation UFO towards the region, and the other is a scout for terror mission in Europe. We shoot down the retaliation UFO straight away with the Avenger there. It was close to our base, but wasn't in the air for long at least..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/133-hunting_ufos.png)
We send the San Marino team in the skyranger to intercept the terror scout, but as we are flying after it, we see a supply ship coming down for the base. We first try to scramble the Weinan team to handle that, but they are far away, and I don't think they'll make it. As the supply ship has more loot than the scout, we reroute the San Marino team to take the supply ship on the ground, and reroute the Weinan team to go after the scout, which now has already landed. We're guessing it'll come to late to handle them as is, but we have an interceptor in San Marino we can hopefully shoot it down with when it launches again..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/134-47th_ufo_start.png)
Looks like a dangerous start. We decided to drop smoke both on level 0 and 1, but even as we did that on the same turn, some snakeman still got close enough to shoot inside the skyranger. We also did reaction shots but they missed. It looks like the armor took the entire hit though, so no damage done, but yet proven that there's no safe way to start missions.
Moved out and to the southeast and southwest corners of the map for the snipers, and a spotter on the UFO and a spotter behind the hill out west.. Managed rest of the mission fine camping the UFO, though a bit frustrating to see them berserking and blowing up my loot :)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/135-47th_ufo_score.png)
Ended up with a 678 score for that supply mission, while the base is giving the aliens 5 score per day, which isaround 150 in a months time.. So this mission alone made it worth it to not destroy it.. Might be more missions in a month too..
-
I sent San Marino interceptor to await UFO launching, but the skyranger actually came there ahead of me..
Damn.. Right.. It was Ethereals.. Should have shot it down and possible killed a few of them.. They're panicking and berserking and controlling me.. Happily, the laser rifles haven't that big a chance to pass damage through a flying suit. They didn't start affecting us in their turn one when we stayed inside the skyranger though, and we managed to kill 4 going out. Had to use the last TU to do it though. Even Bruce who I intended to keep in the skyranger had to go out and take the final shot.
I'm really looking forward to getting this psyche evaluations..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/136-48th_ufo_score.png)
-
Another terror ship heading for Australia.. Guess we'll have to shoot it down with the Avenger there.. Happy about placing the Avenger down there in the first place ;D..
When 3rd of July comes, our scientists research plasma defence.
Hmm.. We have the option of sinking that terror ship in the ocean. We're going to have to shoot it down regardless, and we'll get no Elerium for it, and we're not currently short on cash.. There could very well be another sectoid leader making psi attacks there, and all those cyberdiscs can also be nasty.. Dropped it in the ocean.. And soon after, we got yet another small scout to shoot in the ocean on a Ethereal retaliation mission down there..
5th of July we research Mind Shield and start on Laser Defense..
6th of July we shoot down a medium scout on sectoid retaliation mission in North America.. Though we shot it down over Australia, so at least far from that base.. Guess the Weinan team will be the ones to go down and take the ground mission of what remains..
Wasn't much to clean up..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/137-49th_ufo_score.png)
-
There's lots of Ethereal retaliation missions which I keep trying to shoot down over water.. One I shot down over Africa but skipped the ground mission.. Also some small scouts with various other missions which I destroyed in the air..
First workshop is done in Antarctica base.. Starting to produce more laser rifles there.. Stuffing equipment all around so each base have a decent set of equipment if a base defense mission should arise.. Now got 7 flying suits and 2 power suits for each base without an assault team, and creating some more. Heavy plasma all around, and some alien grenades, a blaster launcher each and some psi-amps for when psyche evaluation is complete..
-
17th of July we spot an infiltration UFO in North America.. We set off in the San Marino avenger to get there fast, thinking we'll fight it on the ground, but then we come to consider that shooting it down may delay infiltration, so we shoot it down and fight it on the ground. Only 2 sectoids alive though, and both were killed when we exited the Avenger in turn 2.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/138-50th_ufo_na_infiltration_score.png)
We let one get a reaction shot in though, which was totally unnecessary.
A bit later we got a medium scout retaliation mission in North America, which we also shot down and fought with the San Marino team..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/138-52th_ufo_score.png)
Daniel got killed here, but he was a rookie, so while it's always sad to lose someone, his replacement will probably be more skilled.
On the 20th of July we spot a medium scout with snakemen on Alien Research mission in South America.. It's currently over the pole, and it's soon daytime down there, so this sounds like a mission we can fight on the ground in daytime without shooting it down..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/138-51th_ufo_score.png)
It went very well.. No aliens got to shoot at us.. Nice cover for us to hide behind and get mutual surprise..
The 24th, yet another alien research mission in South America.. This'll be a night mission unless we shoot it down though.. I think we'll just shoot it down..
25th of July and we have finished researching the final alien we had captured live. We have nothing more to research. Dumping 125 scientists.. Leaving 25 to research the odd alien we may capture alive.. That should cut down on monthly maintenance cost..
After awaiting on crash site until day, we start the mission.. And again a snakeman moves into sight of the hatch and shoots inside. Luckily the armor takes the first shot, and the other one misses.. And Val with his 58 reaction manage to reaction shoot and kill it.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/139-53th_ufo_score.png)
After we got deployed the rest worked out fine though..
-
Later the 25th, as we are returning to base, an Ethereal retaliation mission in Europe with a large scout comes. Maybe we should have sent the fast avenger to sink it in the meditteranean, but we sent the interceptor, and ended up shooting it down over land.. Previously we've thought Ethereals on a medium scout.. Might be quite a few more in a large one. Should we risk it or leave it be?
While contemplating whether to attack it we get this:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/140-55th_ufo_spotted-terror.png)
A terror ship full of Ethereals.. We're certainly going to shoot it down, but do we take that mission? It's actually right over Australia at the moment, and we do have an avenger there, so we set it to intercept to see if we can catch it over the indian ocean.. Even though the Avenger has a higher max speed than what the UFO is travelling at, we don't catch up before it's over Russia.. We just tail it for now delaying engaging it until it's over the Baltic Sea.. At least that one is sunk.. One less UFO to worry about.. Only around 6 days until we get psyche evaluation, so lets await that before engaging many of them..
Do not engaging them hurt anything but my score? My score in Europe is great compared to the alien score.. I think I'll let it go..
One consideration. When the month change we get to decide who to keep training.. That's easy in the antarctic base where we are only training half now, we'll switch and evaluate the rest too.. But I'm guessing we'd want to kick some soldiers with poor psionic strength.. Maybe we should hire a lot of new soldiers now, so we could evaluate another bunch, and have a lot more than we want, so we can kick a lot while keeping as many as we want. It would be nice to continue training the good ones, but they can also train while on missions.
We end up hiring 120 more soldiers. It cost quite a few bucks though, so not much in plus now.. Have started producing laser cannons to sell in both San Marino and in the new workshops in Carney now..
The 27th we spot a medium scout of floaters on abduction mission in south east asia.. Finally a mission we can engage on the ground for decent loot.. We'll send the Weinan team after this one.. It's fast approaching night though, so I'm guessing this will end up as a night mission...
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/141-56th_ufo_landed.png)
It just landed, but sunrise is approaching.. We've seen some of these landings stay for quite a few hours.. I think this may just be within what I can wait out until morning.. Right we were.. Day mission.. Yay :)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/142-56th_ufo_score.png)
Went pretty smooth..
On the 31st of July we have managed to gather around 4 million in credits, which we hope to be enough to stay positive after the end of month.. We spot a large scout on infiltration mission in North America though. Maybe we manage a last mission before the end of month.. We shoot it down just north of Australia on land.. But while waiting for daybreak there, we get another ethereal large scout on retaliation mission in Australia, which we shoot down over land in Australia..
We'll likely engang that one after psyche evaluations.. Practically enough, the skyranger moves about as fast around the world as the earth rotates, so once in the light, I can travel straight west and I won't start a night mission.. We engage the infiltration scout at 21:43.. Will be last mission this month, and just in time to sell the loot before end of month as loot magically appears in base right after mission..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/143-57th_ufo_score.png)
There.. We did seem to get a couple of hits that seemed to be taken care of by armor.. Or wasn't really a hit.. Not sure if everything that looks like a hit actually is.. Trying to get into partial cover if I can which might be helpful..
After selling loot we have 6.61 mill credits before end of month..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/144-july_score.png)
Good we got those extra credits..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/145-san_marino_team.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/146-weinan_team.png)
A sad sight.. The San Marino team has an average psionic skill of 35.. The Weinan team have 41 on average. That's not very good luck :/.. There's many soldiers with better skill elsewhere, but they are all rookies.. Looks like we'll have few experienced soldiers in our psi team..
Starting stats Current stats
TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str PSt PSk TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str PSt PSk Score
[Max cap*] 60 70 40 60 60 70 80 40 40 100 24 80 100 60 100 100 120 120 70 100 100+
Val 53 60 27 10 58 49 58 29 35 8 23 57 65 31 10 59 52 58 29 37 8 23 5
Mickey 54 42 32 40 34 61 66 34 36 35 18 62 57 36 40 34 64 66 34 43 35 18 5
Jackie 54 58 38 60 57 44 71 26 25 34 21 59 65 46 60 57 46 71 26 34 34 21 5.5
Ryan 57 65 25 10 38 70 80 31 34 31 24 73 95 56 10 42 96 86 31 69 31 24 7
Hugo 54 66 34 40 50 53 64 29 23 40 21 65 70 47 40 51 58 69 29 35 40 21 6.5
Hudson 54 58 38 30 60 56 68 34 37 4 16 60 69 42 30 60 60 68 34 40 4 16 6
Jason 58 65 34 50 47 43 67 26 30 81 21 81 100 60 50 57 62 77 26 65 81 21 8
Shailene 54 57 26 60 50 46 56 28 38 44 19 65 74 40 60 51 51 57 28 48 44 19 6
Colin 57 64 38 50 50 42 62 28 21 16 22 80 92 57 50 54 56 64 28 54 16 22 7
Chris 50 64 30 40 57 60 56 33 27 22 23 50 72 39 40 61 66 57 33 35 22 33 8
Keanu 50 53 30 10 49 70 58 20 40 25 17 80 99 60 10 54 104 58 20 70 25 17 7
Tom 51 58 25 50 44 67 65 27 29 46 19 70 85 47 50 47 81 65 27 53 46 19 7
Charlize 58 40 40 40 58 41 62 23 25 47 18 80 93 59 40 70 66 64 23 63 47 18 8
Harrison 50 58 32 50 57 53 80 37 20 95 17 80 91 60 50 65 70 84 37 49 95 17 8
Gal 53 44 39 50 57 61 77 27 37 40 20 74 70 55 50 61 75 81 27 62 40 20 8
Daisy 51 66 38 60 54 68 68 27 20 35 24 68 93 61 60 54 81 69 27 54 35 24 8
Christopher 53 56 35 60 54 66 73 27 24 10 22 78 86 57 60 58 85 74 27 62 10 22 8
Arnold 57 65 30 60 60 45 77 40 22 46 19 80 96 59 60 71 62 80 40 64 46 19 8
Sylvester 58 59 40 40 59 67 75 40 23 8 22 68 74 42 40 61 78 76 40 44 8 22 9
Ben 51 49 25 30 36 57 60 21 32 25 23 61 59 29 30 36 63 66 21 41 25 23 4
Jeremy 50 51 28 10 35 70 68 25 20 79 18 52 55 32 10 35 73 68 25 23 79 18 4.5
Will 52 41 34 40 31 59 78 30 30 61 24 56 48 35 40 31 59 78 30 36 61 24 5
Charles 60 54 31 20 55 40 54 28 27 25 18 61 58 33 20 55 40 54 28 27 25 18 5.5
George 57 62 35 10 50 48 74 25 24 65 18 57 62 35 10 50 48 74 25 24 65 18 5.5
Halle 60 69 27 50 33 46 73 37 37 8 23 65 76 33 50 34 48 78 37 49 8 23 5
Vin 52 46 36 60 36 70 51 37 20 67 24 52 46 36 60 36 70 51 37 20 67 24 5.5
Roger 59 46 40 60 37 63 54 33 37 11 22 6
Famke 52 57 32 60 59 44 64 29 30 34 18 56 63 38 60 59 49 65 29 34 34 18 6
Lucy 50 42 40 10 56 68 54 27 40 67 17 50 47 42 10 56 69 54 27 43 67 17 7
Jennifer 57 52 30 30 43 52 74 24 32 49 16 69 78 49 30 52 72 78 24 47 49 16 6
Michael 53 42 26 30 50 53 63 22 40 20 20 71 76 48 30 61 62 64 22 62 20 20 6
Liam 57 63 31 10 46 61 50 26 30 51 19 78 81 51 10 51 73 50 26 55 51 19 7
Denzel 52 56 36 30 54 60 69 35 32 79 23 67 83 52 30 58 70 70 35 51 79 23 7
Eric 58 57 36 60 34 60 75 27 37 33 16 62 64 40 60 34 61 77 27 39 33 16 6
Sigourney 59 65 34 30 51 64 56 27 20 19 24 68 79 40 30 55 69 56 27 40 19 24 7.5
Kate 58 51 37 60 46 70 77 20 40 28 22 73 82 54 60 46 84 81 20 57 28 22 8
Michelle 60 42 39 10 55 67 55 31 35 0 22 80 79 57 10 56 87 60 31 63 0 22 8
Dolph 53 61 33 60 51 67 62 38 26 40 17 60 69 46 60 52 75 65 38 34 40 17 7.5
Bruce 58 61 35 60 58 69 58 34 32 60 22 65 77 43 60 63 75 58 34 38 60 22 9
Ich.. So many soldiers patiently trained by being careful on the battlefield, and from the 19 soldiers of the San Marino team, only 2 of them have psi strength above 47 !!! That's some bad odds. There's 8 from the Weinan team, which is also below par, but the Weinan team is far less trained..
What to do.. Good we hired a lot of new soldiers though, to get a decent chance of getting a decent group. Not sure what happens if you transfer a soldier set to train at a local psi lab, but as we've put another set of soldiers to be trained, we can move the ones trained around freely.
-
Bah.. Checking an old savegame, I see that among the MIA soldiers in the San Marino team, there was 2 soldiers with PSI strength of 100 and 1 at high 90s.. Why on earth did I lose all the good psi ones..
-
Bah.. Checking an old savegame, I see that among the MIA soldiers in the San Marino team, there was 2 soldiers with PSI strength of 100 and 1 at high 90s.. Why on earth did I lose all the good psi ones..
Psykers are easily seduced by CHAOS. :D
-
Only Jason and Harrison from San Marino team have decent psionic strength.. While the Weinan team have better average, they have zero good ones that we can train to avoid being controlled.
Our soldiers haven't gotten any worse from knowing their psionic skill of course, but now we're facing more Ethereals, and eventually final mission in Cydonia, and then we'll face a lot more aliens trying to attack us with psionics
Getting good enough soldiers to be psi immune is hard, but if we rather shoot for:
- Immune against mind control against everyone but commanders that are close (20 tiles).
- Immune against panic attacks against all non-commanders, except for leaders that are close (20 tiles).
From UFOpedia we see that Ethereal Commanders have attack strength of 87 and leaders have 71. Adding 0-55 random, they can roll up to 142 / 126.
Our Psionic Strength + Skill / 5 then needs to be at least 112 to avoid commander mind control, and 116 to avoid panic attack from leader.
Allowing it to happen up to 20 tiles away, they will have at least 10 penalty, meaning we can get away with 106 defense to achieve the goal above. 106 defense can be achieved with:
100 psionic strength, 30 psionic skill
95 psionic strength, 55 psionic skill
90 psionic strength, 80 psionic skill
85 psionic strength, 105 psionic skill
80 psionic streength, 130 psionic skill
75 psionic strength, 155 psionic skill
70 psionic strength, 180 psionic skill
The goal may be a hard one to reach. I'll have to be very patient if all the soldiers I bring to final mission should fulfill those criteria.
One could lower the bar, saying we'll have to live with leaders being able to panic us and commanders being able to control us, but leaders should not be able to control us.. Then the limit becomes 20 easier, and thus 100 less psionic skillis required. Every soldier with 80+ psionic strength can easily be trained to fulfill that.
While there are lots of commanders and leaders at Cydonia, there are only ever 1 commander on a mission on earth, and only a few leaders, so as long as troops are immune to psi attacks from ethereal soldiers, we should be able to cope. While not immune to leader/commanders, having a high value reduce the chance of it occuring. For instance, a soldier with 80 strength and 30 skill, has a mind control defense of 116. An Ethereal commander thus have (42 - 16)/56 = 26/56 =~ 50% chance of success. A leader with 16 less attack strength will be down to 10/56 =~18% chance of success.
We'll try to set the cutoff point for eventual Cydonia crew to be psionic skill 80+. We'll create a psi-core of 80+ soldiers which we will use to handle all Ethereal missions on earth, and which will be the mainstay of our Cydonia attack force. We'll also try to get some 80+ soldiers spread around for base defense. In total among our first trained 110 soldiers, we have around 20 that are 80+. We're training 110 other ones at the moment, so we expect around 20 from those too..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/147-58th_ufo_ethereal_score.png)
We handled the Ethereal scout we had shot down as soon as the month changed. We put all the decent psi strength soldiers in Australia aboard the avenger, with a few decoys in front. Went well.. Got a wounded one, but he only had 69 psi strength, so will not make the psi team regardless.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/147-58th_ufo_ethereal_stats.png)
This stat increase screen is pretty nice too.. Haven't noticed it before. I guess it's new in OpenXCom. General skills increase fast.. We have to work for the rest. But interestingly, psionic skill is trained even with only failed attempts, so we can stuff a lot of psi trainees onto ships just to try and fail before we shoot down aliens.
We've decided to transfer the avenger from Alice Springs over to Harare, and then transfer all the psi strong soldiers down there too. Then they can organize a psi team, and with an avenger they can reach out to most of the world pretty fast. We'll keep the Weinan and San Marino teams as backup teams, to handle non-Ethereal missions when needed, but we'll prefer to use the psi-team to train them fast. We may also send some high strength psi soldiers to Weinan and San Marino teams just to follow on any missions to train psi skill..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/148-58th_ufo_spotted_muton.png)
Once all transfers have started, we of course spotted 2 UFOs. One Muton terror scout. I guess San Marino team may fly down there and take a day mission on the ground. There's also a a snakeman retaliation scout on the way to antarctica. Can't remember us having shot down anything down there, but ok.. With the Avenger and Interceptor in Harare and Alice Springs trading places, we have no interceptors down there. I guess we can try Weinan and Amazonas interceptors to see if they manage to catch up to it..
We managed eventually to catch up to the small scout and shot it down.. It was close to base though, and have been there for a bit.. Lets hope they didn't see it..
Then the Mutons land and we have our first Muton mission.. ;D
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/149-58th_ufo_start.png)
No waiting for action here I see.. I guess drop smoke and wait is likely best.. If that's enough smoke to hide us at least..
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/150-58th_ufo_score.png)
There were 3-4 in the building on top there.. And the rest was in the open outside the UFO out west. We lost a rookie we put in front to scout, but everyone else managed alright. Smoked worked great this time around..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/151-59th_ufo_spotted.png)
This wasn't what I hoped to spot.. If these guys come for my main base I may actually be in trouble.. They are so psi weak that they can be controlled easily by any Ethereal.. Even the soldiers.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/152-59th_ufo_returning2base.png)
Not helped by the main team not being at the sight.. Only rookies are left at the base.. Though quite a bit of them.. If they are going straight for our base, they'd get there first, but thankfully it was just scouting and it left the base alone for now.. Though did it locate our base so next time will be for real??
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/153-60th_ufo_spotted.png)
This wasn't what we'd hoped to spot either.. I guess this means we're losing US or Canada as a contributor. Likely the US.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/154-61th_ufo_spotted.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/155-62th_ufo_spotted.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/156-62th_ufo_engaging.png)
We don't really feel rigged to handle all this activity at once.. We managed to quickly scan our psi-squad and get them out towards North America.. Weinan team is also on the way.. San Marino team is still refueling.. Shot down supply ship (or was it terror ship?) over the water.. The other we shot down over Baja California.. The scout got shot down in east US. I guess the San Marino team might eventually get to battle there.. The battleship we don't feel like shooting down, but the new psi team is on the way over to attack it on the ground.. Not that we expect it to stop the infiltration mission sadly, but at least we'll get loot, score and training..
-
The battleship fight is not easy to do safely..
We only brought one decoy rookie with no psi strength. He died on the first tile of movement in the mission, as a cyberdisc saw him through the smoke and shot him underneath from the side. Thankfully that depleted enough TUs on the cyberdisc for others to get out and take it down without more reaction shots. There were more cyberdiscs around the deployment area, but we managed to get them all in the deployment round.
We managed to clear the outside of the UFO without further death's or injury, but we got a few shots after us. We are now in control of the outside, and can camp the exits or enter the UFO.
Although this is the start of my future psi-squad and everyone is 80+ psionic strength, we get a handful of psi attacks against us every round. They have managed to mind control one of the soldiers at least once, and several has been panicking and berserking. Thankfully the berserkers have not hit anything, and the controlled one had only a laser rifle and didn't manage to pass armor on his targets.
We have quite a few armed with heavy plasma though, as we haven't had time to transfer laser rifles to the team yet. If we storm the UFO and these are controlled or berserking while close to others, there will be disaster..
So what to do? Camp or storm? I've seen no indication of the enemy trying to leave, though it's still fairly early. In any case, we'll likely be camping for quite a few rounds to be able to take most of them on the outside, and during all these turns, we may be controlled or berserking, and eventually we will harm a fellow soldier.. Maybe we just have to storm it..
Many of the officers might be on the top floor though. We have a blaster launcher so we could potentially create a hole in top to enter through, and try to get rid of those officers first..
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/157-62th_ufo_camping.png)
Camping the UFO.. The guys with clear view to middle has just come down from hiding behind wall on level above..
Decided to storm the UFO, rather than keep waiting and see if we shoot ourselves..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/158-62th_ufo_firstturnstorm1.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/158-62th_ufo_firstturnstorm2.png)
This is high stakes poker.. We had a turn just outside doors below.. Noone had come out for many turns, so no special reasons they should do it this turn, but if they did they'd have enough targets to grenade.. We opened the door and immediately saw a cyberdisc.. Full auto and we blew it up.. We went in from other direction and saw 2 more discs and shot them down too. Then we ran in and took positions as you can see above.. This can backfire easily though..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/159-62th_ufo_panicked.png)
Next turn one of our guys panicked and ran down to expose an alien down there, that somehow didn't shoot at us at all. We could easily take him down next turn..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/160-62th_ufo_panicked_again.png)
On the floor above, another unit panicked and ran to the room on top there, blocking the entrance with a leader inside it.. Thankfully though, that leader panicked, so couldn't shoot him the following turn..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/159-62th_ufo_commander_and_leader.png)
We got a few reaction shots when aliens came out into the hallways.. Here we see the commander on top and the last leader out right.. We could easily shoot down both.. Glorious victory.. High stakes invading this UFO, but doing it fast and overwhelming in numbers, we limited the time in which we took risks at least..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/161-62th_ufo_score.png)
I couldn't hope for more.. Just lost the decoy we sent out first.
-
The Weinan team finally got to Mexico to fight the supply UFO we shot down..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/162-63th_ufo_start.png)
We sadly lost Jeremy as he got out of the Skyranger, but the rest survived. There were some mind controlling bastards here, and our crew have no resistance so we went guns blazing as fast as we can to clear, using all our guys. Now that all are identified as psi-weaklings we're not treating them as royalty anymore.. Work for a living..
There were a few turn ends, where I expected aliens to come around and kill a soldier or two, but we managed to keep them alive.. Medi-kits saved Liam and Denzel, who are out of action for 32 and 8 days..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/163-63th_ufo_end.png)
A decent score.. And quite a bit of loot..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/165-63th_ufo_score.png)
When the San Marino team got ready, we sent them out to finish what was left on the ground after we shot down that scout..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/166-64th_ufo_score.png)
Easy...
The Harare Psi-team have now started to get some equipment.. All in all, they count 23 soldiers. Spot for only one more on the Avenger. They're fully armored. Two in front in power suits, to be able to drop sideways of exit fast, and the rest in flying suits.. (Though fairly easy to get around in flying suits too on the Avenger, so I guess we may soon give all flying suits). All have laser rifles, and they have smoke, proximity and alien grenades for support.. Hmm.. I should buy some flares too.. 15 medikits should suffice, and 15 psi-amps are a few short, as we want to give everyone one, but plenty to start training most of them. We'll likely just use front 8 to handle the mission, and leave 15 in the Avenger to train with psi-amps.. We also have blaster launcher, stun launcher and mind probe for support if needed..
The current psi-squad members are:
Starting stats Current stats
TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str PSt PSk TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str PSt PSk Score
[Max cap*] 60 70 40 60 60 70 80 40 40 100 24 80 100 60 100 100 120 120 70 100 100+
Jessica A 56 59 29 30 45 65 61 21 35 80 19 7
Chuck 54 61 29 50 40 58 54 23 26 80 16 5.5
Jessica B 51 58 40 40 42 48 59 31 35 81 22 5
Karl 50 65 31 10 33 45 76 38 38 81 23 3
Jet 53 64 29 10 48 54 75 21 27 82 21 3.5
Christian 51 53 37 20 53 66 76 38 21 82 16 6.5
Jennifer L 57 44 25 10 60 46 52 25 35 84 24 6
Rose 52 48 37 50 43 50 63 32 33 84 17 5
Mel 54 65 30 10 46 61 76 37 37 84 20 5
Nicolas 58 40 30 30 38 42 57 37 24 85 24 61 45 34 30 38 44 57 37 24 85 24 3.5
Steven 53 49 33 50 46 47 58 27 35 87 16 57 55 33 50 46 48 58 27 40 87 16 5
Russel 59 62 25 30 32 65 77 36 36 87 24 6
Matt 57 61 39 30 52 55 50 38 21 89 22 6.5
Jean Claude 54 57 34 30 41 61 80 23 20 91 21 3.5
Orlando 51 49 32 10 34 68 53 25 23 91 21 4.5
Viggo 56 62 38 20 34 50 77 40 30 95 17 4
Sean 59 47 25 20 31 68 74 24 30 95 16 6
Dwayne 54 56 29 40 31 59 67 32 34 96 23 5
Wesley 57 63 34 50 40 43 59 21 26 91 22 5.5
Lucy 56 46 35 50 54 54 72 38 37 98 22 59 53 35 50 54 54 72 38 37 98 22 7
Clint 59 43 35 20 50 66 70 33 39 98 22 62 45 35 20 50 66 70 33 43 98 22 8
Jason 58 65 34 50 47 43 67 26 30 81 21 81 100 60 50 57 62 77 26 65 81 21 8
Harrison 50 58 32 50 57 53 80 37 20 95 17 80 91 60 50 65 70 84 37 49 95 17 8
They all do have 80+ psi strength, but other than that, they have a lot to improve..
Next up, we're considering taking out the alien base.. I'm guessing we'll soon get another one in the US after the infiltration mission..
-
We went to the alien base, but noticed there were poor lighting there, and we did not bring flares. We decided to go right back and await flares coming in. With nothing happening that was zero score, so we only wasted an Elerium unit or two to travel back and forth..
In the meantime, another battleship with Ethereals were on retaliation mission in Europe, but didn't attack base this time either. Then we saw a large scout with floaters.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/167-65th_ufo_start.png)
Should be an easy mission. However, we brought no expendable rookies along. All we have are 80+ psi strength which we'd like to keep for now.. But being careful that works out ok.. It also helps having a boatload of psi-amps with us.. Whenever we spotted someone, we could do a ton of panic attack attempts. If we managed to get their morale down to zero, we knew they would panic next turn and we could end turn fairly safely.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/168-65th_ufo_score.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/169-65th_ufo_stats.png)
Here we can see that we did the mission with the first 8 soldiers, which mostly gained some accuracy/reaction (we camped the UFO exit, standing on top of UFO so we could shoot anyone coming out in the back), and the rest which gained psionic skill by doing panic attempts. It seems to work to keep panicking the same unit even though his morale is already zero.
We want some rookies on the psi-team, especially in fights where we don't expect much psi-attacks against us. We also have a ton of soldiers with poor psi-strength, and we've bought a lot of new soldiers to train, so the low-psi strength rookies are very expendable. Sending 7 soldiers from Great Falls to fill up the living quarter in Harare, being the first set of rookies to bring with us.
The alien base in Africa is a snakeman base, so safe from psi-attacks.. But they do have fast moving Chryssalid, so better have some meat shields in front of anyone we'd want to keep. Now.. How many meat shields to send?
At the alien base our forces will be deployed split in two groups, so might need a few to cover the exits of both teams.
-
We ended up using all the 7 expendables sent from Great Falls in the team.. We were scared about the Chryssalid's, and want a strategy to avoid them. They can move from outside sight range and kill a soldier in an open desert environment at daytime, and in this base with a thousand corners that isn't even lit, they have way too many places to hide for there to be any safe place to put a soldier on the floor.
There are a few rooms in the base that is two storage tall, so we could hover at second level in flying suit.. However, we'd then need to get to such positions. But we figured, what if we cover up all 8 tiles of the lifts in the rooms we start with? Then there's no room for the chryssalid to take the elevator, and he can't attack from the level below.. Still sounds a bit dangerous with snakemen coming in and shooting up, but if we move down each turn and shoot everything we see, then hopefully few snakemen come below us with TUs left to shoot.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/170-1st_base_start.png)
We put the remaining dudes next to the elevator to be close in case we needed some extra people to go down and shoot a turn, or to get a bit better view of what happened below, but it might just have put them in extra danger from snakeman shots.. In any case, it worked like a charm. Anything moving into range have used enough TUs to not reaction shoot when we dropped down from above (or possibly mutual surprise saved us a few times).. We sent the 4 in the elevator down. Looked around and went back up each turn.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/171-1st_base_downfightt.png)
Here we found a chryssalid to shoot. Several we saw just underneath us later and we could just shoot them from directly above..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/172-1st_base_slaughter.png)
Eventually there was carnage below.. While our troops still have poor psionic skill, we did attempt a lot of mind controls, and among a ton of attempts we did manage some mind controls. This was very useful to drop weapon in hand and scout a bit.. We also tested a blaster launcher.. Think we mind controlled 3 different dudes with blaster launchers.. Good neither of those understood they could just fire them up the elevator or our team had been toast.. But due to the mind control, we learned of how the base was layed out without ever having walked away from the elevator..
Eventually, noone else showed up, and turn timer was short enough to indicate only 1 or maybe 2 left.. The expendables was sent to look for the last one, and found a snakeman without a weapon.. Probably the reason it didn't walk up to us..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/172-1st_base_score.png)
Wait.. Who blew up my Elerium? Sadly, the expendables stole all the rifle training using this tactics, but it's more important to up psionic skill and general stats at this time..
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/173-66th_ufo_score.png)
Got Ethereal retaliation scout towards South Africa.. Intercepted with psi-team.. One of the 2 expendables we sent in was killed as he was panicked and moved in front of the UFO exit. But none of the psi-team was panicked or controlled this time around.. Lots of good psi-training trying to panic ethereals...
-
Shot down a very small harvest scout, and we get a large sectoid scout on retaliation mission in US, which we shoot down and engage with the psi-squad..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/174-68th_ufo_start.png)
We start of with an alien looking in, but dropping smoke in avenger cuts line of sight and saves us. But we use yet another turn to smoke level below, as we dare not use TUs to throw while sectoid can possibly reaction shoot. Especially as we'd have to arm it first..
In turn 3 we move out, and sadly, there's a sectoid directly underneath the avenger which shoots one of our expendables dead.. Next one manage to see him though, and then we can start mind controlling and soon the mission is easy.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/175-68th_ufo_training.png)
We ensure all of the psi-squads get some psi training before we complete.. Panic attempts is very useful as you can keep doing them even though their morale is at 0, so everyone get their training.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/176-68th_ufo_score.png)
Not a lot of loot as we had to shoot it down, but the training value is great...
Next up, we detect a large scout with mutons.. Again the psi-squad jumps into action..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/178-69th_ufo_start.png)
Managing to see mutons in the jungle is horrible..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/177-69th_ufo_scouts.png)
We found 2 outside and mind controlled them to do scouting for us.. Can you spot them?
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/179-69th_ufo_ufo.png)
In the very first turn we deployed we actually managed to map out the entire UFO with mind control.. We found a few more next turn, but then everyone was unarmed, and we could do another practice run of psi, reaction and accuracy..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/180-69th_ufo_score.png)
This was a terror scouting mission, so we let it land, so much more loot this time around.
The psi squad now has 30-50 psi skill, and against mutons and sectoid at least, they now are very useful to control them. Getting more skill makes a big difference though. Especially when trying to mind control people from a distance. We managed to control mutons close to avenger fairly easy this time, but the ones we detected far of we did way many tries before we managed to control them, so we didn't always have capacity to mind control everything we saw..
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/181-70th_ufo_spotted.png)
It's time for a bigger challenge for the psi-team...
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/182-70th_ufo_start.png)
This got a little messy.. Thankfully the only kill they managed was an expendable in the front line.. But we needed to put many in danger and clear the UFO.. We have a few wounded soldiers on the team now though..
The sectopod were way armored, and took a lot of laser rifle fire before they died.. And as they're not a reaper with only melee attacks it may reaction fire too.
We forgot to disarm all the expendables so they shot a bit around and dumped a few alien grenades on us, but armor took it. But when we figured we could mind control our own troops, which helped a lot, as the aliens left them for reaction fire..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/183-70th_ufo_score.png)
We did manage some mind controls of Ethereals that helped a lot, but it wasn't easy.. The sectopod seemed immune.. At least out of my capability to control now..
Happy with not losing any important players..
-
Finished another snakeman large scout mission.. And did some psi, reaction, accuracy training.. Should get some laser and regular pistols onboard to improve the training.. Takes a while to set up..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/184-71th_ufo_score.png)
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/186-72th_ufo_spotted.png)
Hmm.. Suddenly, there's 3 abductor missions going on at the same time in Asia.. We shot down 2 of them, and psi-team are heading to intercept the third hopefully catching it on the ground while it's still daytime.. They're a bit late, as it took a while to refuel that avenger.. (It's still 9th of August)
Wondering if we should send the Weinan team after one of them, but we'll wait and see. Crash site should be there tomorrow still..
The Avenger caught one on the ground and everything went well, but I forgot to take a screen of the score..
The psi-team is getting some training though.. Current stats:
Starting stats Current stats
TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str PSt PSk TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str PSt PSk Score
[Max cap*] 60 70 40 60 60 70 80 40 40 100 24 80 100 60 100 100 120 120 70 100 100+
Karl 50 65 31 10 33 45 76 38 38 81 23 58 74 46 10 37 54 77 38 57 81 43 3
Jet 53 64 29 10 48 54 75 21 27 82 21 67 78 48 10 52 63 75 21 41 82 37 6
Nicolas 58 40 30 30 38 42 57 37 24 85 24 72 65 48 30 42 48 57 37 37 85 40 5
Jean Claude 54 57 34 30 41 61 80 23 20 91 21 74 77 51 30 43 68 80 23 43 91 36 6
Orlando 51 49 32 10 34 68 53 25 23 91 21 64 71 46 10 41 79 53 25 43 91 39 6
Jessica B 51 58 40 40 42 48 59 31 35 81 22 65 78 53 40 48 61 60 31 44 81 41 6
Jason 58 65 34 50 47 43 67 26 30 81 21 81 100 60 50 60 69 77 26 71 81 43 9
Rose 52 48 37 50 43 50 63 32 33 84 17 68 72 53 50 45 56 63 32 49 84 39 6
Mel 54 65 30 10 46 61 76 37 37 84 20 69 87 51 10 48 64 76 37 58 84 40 5
Steven 53 49 33 50 46 47 58 27 35 87 16 78 76 48 50 47 54 58 27 56 87 43 5
Wesley 57 63 34 50 40 43 59 21 26 91 22 71 80 54 50 43 43 59 21 48 91 51 6
Chuck 54 61 29 50 40 58 54 23 26 80 16 66 80 43 60 42 59 54 23 45 80 42 6
Jennifer L 57 44 25 10 60 46 52 25 35 84 24 69 72 47 10 62 48 52 25 52 84 61 6
Russel 59 62 25 30 32 65 77 36 36 87 24 71 78 37 30 41 69 77 36 54 87 57 7
Matt 57 61 39 30 52 55 50 38 21 89 22 68 80 53 30 53 57 50 38 38 89 48 7
Christian 51 53 37 20 53 66 76 38 21 82 16 64 76 51 20 56 72 76 38 51 82 35 7
Jessica A 56 59 29 30 45 65 61 21 35 80 19 67 84 49 30 48 68 61 21 51 80 47 7
Viggo 56 62 38 20 34 50 77 40 30 95 17 65 79 52 20 36 54 77 40 39 95 38 4
Sean 59 47 25 20 31 68 74 24 30 95 16 69 69 43 20 36 74 74 24 54 95 48 6
Dwayne 54 56 29 40 31 59 67 32 34 96 23 71 72 49 40 33 63 67 32 49 96 49 5
Lucy 56 46 35 50 54 54 72 38 37 98 22 75 72 49 50 56 56 72 38 60 98 49 8
Clint 59 43 35 20 50 66 70 33 39 98 22 75 68 54 20 50 66 70 33 59 98 54 8
Harrison 50 58 32 50 57 53 80 37 20 95 17 80 97 60 50 65 73 84 37 57 95 41 8
Some are getting psi skill above 50 which is starting to get very usable. Some of the new ones have gotten to 75 TU so they can do 3 psi actions per turn and other skills are slowly rising too..
Not to mention health and strength which is now great all around, so all of them can carry a decent set of gear, and with health approaching the max cap, together with decent armor they have a good survival chance against plasma fire too.
A heavy plasma is set to do 115 damage, meaning it does from 0 to 230 damage. A flying suit has 110 front armor. If shot in the front, a soldier with 60 health needs to take 170 damage before dying, giving a ~73% chance of survival if he can be mended with medikit fast. A plasma rifle is stated to do 80 damage, which is 0-160, so if we get that in front with flying suit we are guaranteed to survive a single hit.
The Avenger is ready again reasonably fast.. Should we do a night mission, to be able to handle them fast? I'm pretty sure we're able to handle both tomorrow, so think we'll aim for taking out next just after daybreak.
While waiting for daybreak we get this:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/187-alien_base_mission_in_us.png)
Will there be a lot of ships creating the base on the same day we have 3 abductors to handle? Or is the scout just scouting and it'll come later.. Thinking the latter.. Lets shoot it down in hopes of delaying base. Destroyed..
-
In the morning we went for another one of them:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/188-73th_ufo_start.png)
Easy floater mission with training for the psi-squad..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/189-73th_ufo_score.png)
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/190-74th_ufo_start.png)
Yet another floater abductor mission, and again starting with 2 aliens having clear view into skyranger.. This would easily have been a dead soldier a month ago..
Now however, we can just mind control from the back of our skyranger, and use them as scouts and ensure area is clear before we step out.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/191-74th_ufo_meeting.png)
While the aliens have a meeting discussing how to handle the situation, we get our guys in position..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/191-74th_ufo_last.png)
Some reaction/rifling training here.. And psi training to boot...
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/192-74th_ufo_score.png)
Wasn't much loot to gather up though...
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/193-75th_ufo_training.png)
The next UFO we were up against a large scout with Ethereals on a retaliation mission.
An excellent opportunity to train.. We have now brought 20 pistols, and 21 pistol clips.. For the 21 on the mission that aren't expendables in front of the skyranger..
We mind controlled and moved all aliens within the UFO and dumped all their weapons, and then positioned around the UFO to train reaction and rifling after we had done enough psi-training..
To boot we will also do some morale training as the Ethereals try to panic our soldiers..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/194-75th_ufo_execution.png)
21 empty pistol clips later, and half the Ethereals are still alive.. Not much damage in those pistols, so everyone got their training.. So time for the execution squad to get rid of the remaining ones.. Sadly, the expendables with crap psionic skill were constantly mind controlled and panicked, leaving less such attacks on the dudes we wanted to train.. I guess we should have left them behind so they'd have to try controlling the psi-squad instead.. It wasn't an issue as they had no weapons on them, but I'm guessing it meant less bravery training for the rest.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/194-75th_ufo_score.png)
This pretty typical score doesn't make out how excellent this turned out..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/195-75th_ufo_stats.png)
Psi, rifling, reaction and bravery training for everyone.. Though only a few of the psi-squad seemed to be target for panic attacks..
-
At this point, the psi-team is looking awesome.. They mind control the Ethereals fairly easy.. I'm guessing the final mission can be done easily any time we feel like it from now on...
Oh.. And we got a ton of cash, so just to use it for something we built a grav lift and 3 fusion beam defense modules on each of the 7 original bases.
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/196-76th_ufo_muton_terror_spotted.png)
Next up is muton terror mission.. Going after it with psi-squad before it involves civilians..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/197-76th_ufo_muton_terror_training.png)
Another good opportunity for training.. Mutons and silacoid have more than enough armor and health for all 21 to empty a pistol clip.. Good reaction/rifling boost, and psi training hurding them together..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/198-76th_ufo_muton_terror_score.png)
Mutons were exceptionally easy to mind control.. Silacoids not that rough either.. The celatid had good resistance though, and were fairly tough to mind control at range.. They have ranged weapon I can't remove anyhow, so had to kill these off before starting to train...
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/199-77th_ufo_ethereal_battleship_spotted.png)
We spotted a battleship with Ethereals on the way on retaliation mission towards southern Africa. That doesn't worry us that much as the psi-squad is thankfully located there.. But I don't think they have located the base yet, so probably just scouting.. However, a battleship of Ethereals will be a nice test for the psi-team and a chance to train towards Cydonia mission..
We'll be able to see to what level the Ethereals manage to psionically affect the squad.. And we can also train bravery alongside psionics, reaction and rifling skill..
So we gave it a go and shot it down with the Avenger. That makes it take quite a bit of damage though, so the Avenger will be out for repairs the next 12 days.. We've ordered the avenger in San Marino to relocate to Harare for now.. Hoping it arrives fast..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/200-77th_ufo_ethereal_battleship_training.png)
We were hoping to disarm the Ethereals having the commander alive, but sadly I think he got killed by reaction fire from mind controlled aliens. Or maybe we forgot to check everyone and he was killed during accuracy/reaction training with pistols..
In either case, after we had emptied all our pistol clips, there were 6 leaders left, and we disarmed all our own soldiers and let the turns pass to see if they managed to control anyone.. Some learnings:
- They didn't mind control anyone (I had left the expendables on the base so only psi-squad members were in)
- They did manage to panic some, but only a handful, which typically were the weakest among them. Didn't they target the rest and try, or were they immune?
- Then my forces panic, they may throw grenades they have on them. I nearly got a casualty figuring this out, but we saved Jessica B with a medikit.. She'll be in the hospital for 17 days though..
With commanders they will be able to do a bit more psionic damage, but it looks good. We control them far easier than they control us.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/201-77th_ufo_ethereal_battleship_score.png)
I wasn't expecting Elerium as we shot it down, but no artifacts? I'm pretty sure we got some weapons and a mind probe at least, but it doesn't show up in screen.
-
I decided to track some soldier data in a spreadsheet to make it simpler to get a good overview
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/202-soldiers.png)
The score bits are some subjective bits I've added. For now being:
Potential score is a value for how big a potential this soldier has to be the perfect soldier. Dominated by psionic strength, then starting TUs, and then some points for current bravery/reaction/rifling accuracy skills as they are a bit trickier to train than the rest.
Current score is the current stats modified with the weights on top, but removing additions from strength above 40, and ignores value of psionic skill if psionic strength is below 70.
The total is the weighted potential + current score, modified to get values maxing out at around 100%.
This is the psi-team on top, then the San Marion team and the Weinan team on the bottom. The latter teams scoring bad as I've set high importance for psionics.
Once the month is done and we have 110 new recruits with known psionic strengths, we can feed the data into here to get an easier overview as to whom to keep on the payroll.
-
Yet more missions...
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/203-sectoid_scout.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/204-sectoid_scout_training.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/205-sectoid_scout_score.png)
We took down a sectoid scout..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/206-muton_scout_base.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/207-muton_supply_ship.png)
Are we getting a muton base in North America? They are nice targets for reaction and accuracy training with all their health at least. We haven't spotted any base yet, but haven't patrolled for one either.. But haven't seen a battleship yet, so guessing it hasn't got far enough to be built yet..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/208-muton_training.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/209-muton_score.png)
Fought the supply ship in the arctic..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/210-next_score.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/211-more_score.png)
And some scouts..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/212-terror_score.png)
A terror mission in South Africa.. Though we shot it down, so we avoided the civilians..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/213-more_score.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/214-yet_more_score.png)
And yet some scouts.. Some on retaliation missions I think..
We've lost some soldiers walking first out of the transport, but thankfully only expendables we took along. With our psi-squad we are fast in total control after having spotted some aliens..
We had an incident in one training session against a muton scout though.. We were pretty sure we had disarmed all the muton, but suddonly a grenade went of in our line, wounding 3-4 soldiers. They all survived, but many members currently in the hospital. We had no armed grenades on us as far as I can tell, so must have been a muton with a grenade, though I was pretty sure noone had any.. Well well.. Shit happens..
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/215-battleship_score.png)
Score from a sectoid battleship on harvest mission I think it was..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/216-ethereal_scout_retaliation_training.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/217-ethereal_scout_retaliation_score.png)
Another Ethereal scout on retaliation mission.. Another training opportunity.. We actually stunned the expendables that were psi weak to try and make them attack the rest.. They did try, but all they managed was to panic one of them.. Seems the psi-squad is fairly immune to psi-efforts from ethereal leaders.. Meaning they should be fairly unlikely to be mind controlled by the commanders too..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/218-floater_scout_retaliation_score.png)
Towards the end of the month, we got a floater retaliation mission which we shot down.. Only 4 surviving floaters that was quickly shot down..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/219-august_score.png)
They aliens got to the US and made them draw out of our agreement.. Rrr.. The retard president over there boasted he did the best deals and saw no reason why our fight benefited him personally. No matter.. Now we have solid funding and can take on the final solution anytime we want.. Dunno what to use the remaining $48 million for.. We even shelled out for base defense all around last month.. Which will finish building in 16 days in our 6 main bases, and in 32 days in Carney (Antarctic base)
A massive score though.. And the other nations are close to make up what the US added..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/220-base_detected.png)
We got reports of an alien base too...
-
There's a lot of retaliation missions coming in, many with battleships and many with Ethereals.. So decided to take the now well developed psi-team and split it up a bit..
Sending two experienced members to each base, and six to the San Marino base to start of a second assault team.
Firing a ton of psi-weak soldiers.. Got quite a few promising recruits that we have now identified psi strength of, and which now can use a psi-amp. Sent most of them to Harare. The psi-team there is now thus a few experienced soldiers and a whole bunch of recruits. The remaining promising recruits was sent to San Marino. A new batch of soldiers are now training in the psi labs, and we have fired all the known psi-weaklings, including the entire original San Marino assault team. A bit sad to see all the soldiers go that we carefully trained to begin with, but we have enough soldiers to do what we want without them.
Defense buildings are soon ready in the main 6 bases.. We've kept on producing some bits to give all the bases a decent set of equipment for base defense. Now that every base has two experienced soldiers from the psi-core, and we have decent weapons and armor all around, I think we should be good if there's a base assault.
We have not taken out the alien base yet.. It's a muton base, so we are expecting muton supply ships, and mutons are excellent for reaction and rifling training as they can endure a lot of pistol shots.. As we have plenty of soldiers to train now, lets hope we see some supply ships.
Getting a bit bored of training soldiers though. We do have good control, and should soon do the final mission. Most of the wounded soldiers are now back in action. Only Jason remains wounded, but he has yet another month before he's healed, so quite a while to wait for him..
Was amazed by how fast we managed to train psi-skill doing missions. Knowing that you get experience from failed psi-attacks, and that you can panic an alien as many times as you want and get xp each time regardless if he's already at zero morale, we can train 26 soldiers psi-skill to max every mission from a single alien seen. Thus most of the psi-squad maxed psi-skill to 100 during only one month. Thus, once we have identified psionic strength, it's better to detect it in more soldiers than to keep training the psi-strong ones, if you want more soldiers..
-
...
I wasn't expecting Elerium as we shot it down, but no artifacts? I'm pretty sure we got some weapons and a mind probe at least, but it doesn't show up in screen.
Artefacts are only things you haven't researched yet. Once you research something it will not show up as artefact and will not give you points. It is that way in the original, but is easy to miss.
-
Kind of remembered I've read somewhere that artifacts isn't artifacts once researched but have never noticed the effect before. I guess we could have gotten some extra point by not researching stuff we don't need then, but we don't really need those points anyhow, so no worries..
September started pretty quiet. A few scouts here and there to take care of, most on retaliation missions so we had to shoot them down. I think there was a harvester or two in the mix too..
I'll stop showing a report for every mission, but now that we have psi-control the missions are fairly easy to handle. The once dreaded start of seeing aliens from the transport is now ideal instead, as we can mind control them and use them to ensure it is safe to get out of the transport.
Most have been versus floaters and snakemen though, which limits reaction/accuracy training as the aliens die before all has trained. In latest half of the month we finally spot a muton supply ship in North America. Have been waiting for a chance of better training.. However, to our surprise they don't fly directly towards the base, and then we see a battleship on alien base mission too.. They're building a second muton base there, instead of supplying the first..
Then we decide to just shoot down the supply ship, and let the strike team follow the battleship to take it when it lands. A battleship of muton's is enough resistance for everyone to train reaction and rifling, alongside psi and general skills.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/221-muton_training.png)
Here we have created fire corridors to not shoot our own soldiers. This is final part when we execute the rest though. We've emptied pistol clip for everyone with reaction shots first, and then we don't need fire corridors as our troops are immune to pistol shots in armor.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/222-second_alien_base.png)
Two alien bases.. About time to take one out. I guess underground alien base mission is underground regardless, so we can just go for it as soon as the strike team is ready again..
We've prioritized using the psi-team in Harare for all missions to train the new members that we collected from all our bases due to their psionic strength. That way we can train a lot of psionic skill.. We now have working squads elsewhere, but with quite a few members not identified psi-strength of yet, so if we used them we could not train psi skill there yet.
I've created a small perl script that scans my savefile and creates a csv file of all soldiers in all bases, which I can use to easily cut/paste into excel sheet with more bits. This is how the Harare team currently looks:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/223-psi_team.png)
The potential score is a simple formula dominated by psionic strength, getting a good bonus for high starting TU, and some points for starting of with high reaction/bravery/accuracy which is harder to train than the secondary stats. The current score is basically the weighted sum of the current attributes (with some minor tweaks to not count psi skill at all if psi strength is low for instance),a nd the total is the weighted sum of potential and current score, divided by a number to get values going up to around 100%.
The formula is not intended to be perfect in any way, but is just a way for me to quickly decide order in transport and who are most expendable, rather than having to evaluate manually.
Oh.. And you may notice that some of the new recruits have fairly similar names to ones that got kicked out or died earlier. Have started giving using enough of last names to make them unique. Haven't figured out names for everyone yet, so waiting a bit to show the troops in other bases :)
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/224-attacking_base.png)
(Map above is multiple screenshots put together..)
With psi attacks we can map up the entire base without leaving the loft we started in.. We used first turn to drop smoke grenades down on level below. I didn't seem to be able to throw from top to bottom floor before I had explored the below, but after first one took the elevator down, somebody on top could throw a grenade down.. One person went down and up again and looked around. Saw nothing.. Then a couple of turns where we went down, saw nothing, and tried to throw a flare in a direction we couldn't see very far, and then move back up on the loft. After a few turns we spotted the first muton and mind controlled him, and only a few turns after we had mapped the entire base, with just a couple of muton casualties..
After the turn from the image above, the turn timer seemed instant, as if we had mind controlled everyone, so think this is about it. Max one more alien I think, but I'm guessing none. All the mutons have dropped their weapons, so only the terror troops should present a risk unless we've missed an alien.
Trouble now is to keep track of where we left all the mind controlled aliens so we can reacquire them next turn. Positioning them in a chain so one of them see the next, works very well as we by mind controlling one will spot the next one. Not so easy everywhere while exploring fast though, so have to remember a few aliens that need to move to spot the next one, and in the image above, the muton all to the east (or north east if you tilt your head right) have explored too fast and likely won't be reacquired next turn. Only two entrance to cover though, and he's unarmed and it looked to be noone else there, so we expect to seem him come to us soon. The turn after we confirmed that the base isn't anything more than what we see above. There's a second floor on some modules, and we've cleared them and we're moving out some of our troops to make it easier to spot all aliens next turn...
Now the question is where to gather them for some reaction and fire practice.. The control center looks interesting as it's only one exit to cover. There's enough mutons for everyone to empty a pistol clip, so I think we'll just starting to execute the terror units which suddenly can become dangerous if we forget to mind control them a turn..
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/225-base_score.png)
The base assault ended in lots of experience.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/226-infiltration.png)
After taking out many UFOs, we see an infiltration mission. We shoot it down, but I'm guessing it'll happen sooner or later regardless.. Not this month though..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/227-september_score.png)
September was also a good month. A supply ship got to the alien base at the very end of the month. Expected base to be a muton base though, but the supply ship was filled with sectoids.. Hmm..
We're training yet another bunch of soldiers to detect psionic skill.. Expecting this to be the last bunch we'll train at least.. After this we should be able to have base defense everywhere and two squads all with decent psionic strength.. Jason is healed in another week. If we don't get more wounded by then, we'll have all our soldiers in good shape.
There's been a lot of retaliation missions this month. Many from battleships that we've left alone, but no attacks on any base yet.. Should one come I think we should be able to survive it.. We now also have quite a bit of base defense, so less aliens should get through.
-
Didn't take long into October before we had our first base attack.. This one was towards Alice Springs (Australia)
We shot it down...
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/228-base_attack.png)
This is how most of our bases look at this point:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/229-alice_springs.png)
We have a fourth missile defense being built, and we also have a grav shield, so we had 6 shots this time, and took the UFO down after 3. Thus sounds like we should have a good chance to take down most of the UFOs coming at us.. The two psi-labs have made us able to screen a ton of soldiers. 110 each month. We've recently built the base defense bits, and two more general stores to be able to stock up a bit more in each base.. Two was really enough, but we don't need the money at this point, so stocking up a lot more than we need to. Maybe we should equip everyone on final mission with a blaster launcher? ;D
Not ideal from a base defense point of view. I prioritized being able to complete base defense missions early, but starting so close to the aliens does make it risky. The plan has been to take the access lift immediately, and then just shoot down the aliens as they come through the hangars..
While we're at it, lets show the two bases that differ:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/230-san_marino.png)
This is the first base.. After we dumped most of the scientists, we demolished two living quarters at the sides of the access lift, so now we only have one door to guard at the access lift. It doesn't have space for that fourth missile defense, but shouldn't matter much. We destroyed two research labs to build some more defense. We could probably demolish the alien containment center and the research lab too at this point though.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/231-carney.png)
We built this base just to cover the last bits of land with hyper-wave decoders.. Figured we could use it to store extra stuff, and then we figured we could use it as a second production site. Tested out base design for optimal base defense. However, will likely never see an attack here to test it out..
-
October is ticking along.. More various missions.. Intercepting and shooting down retaliation missions that aren't battleship, and infiltration missions, and some other missions that would otherwise become a night mission, or where too many things happened at once. Otherwise trying to take UFOs while landed.. Many battleships have attacked Australia base, but base defense have shot down all so far..
Our main squad is close to fully trained, having trained the same group for almost two months.
Here's another training mission, showcasing the power of psionics:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/232-muton_mission_turn1.png)
This is how it looks in turn 1 after we've mind controlled the only muton we saw initially, and used him to scout more, and chaining on. Not a single dude have moved out of the Avenger yet, and I'm pretty sure we have mind controlled every alien. In addition to those spottable in the picture, there's two mutons on lower level of ship, 2 purple blobs, and 1 flying blob. The mutons have great camouflage, green on green. Hard to notice the one underneath the avenger, and the one behind the UFO.
All the mutons have been disarmed, so only the terror units pose a threat, and only the flying blobs have a ranged attack.
-
October done.. Another good month.. More of the same.. I guess I should just do the final mission.. Not much to wait for..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/233-october_score.png)
Funding is now 16.148.000. Nothing from US, but everyone else is happy and have increased funding.
We've loaded after selling tons of artifacts though. No need for any more money. Was pondering whether to try once without being able to live on funding from countries alone, but how would I then get rid of artifacts so I can have free space on storage units to buy stuff we need?
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/234-soldiers.png)
After training yet another 110 soldiers, we now have a good amount of psi-strong soldiers and have sacked the rest. We could always redistribute the psi-team, getting ~6 psi-strong soldiers per base, and train another 20 soldiers to be awesome. But why should we.. I think we'll just do the final mission now..
We've trained and trained, using psionics to make it easy.. Not really sure why.. Was considering trying to make it a year before ending the game, but it's getting repetitive.
Most of our bases does now look like this:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/235-base.png)
We managed to build defense before anyone found our bases, and they've only found australian base upto now, so even if we would fail to defend it we'd still be ok losing one base. But we've also got good base defense now, so we should handle the aliens regardless, having a couple of psi-strong soldiers per base.
We now have 6 firestorms and have the 6th avenger in production.
-
Ok.. Final mission.. And here's the loadout..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/236-loadout1.png)
8x of these in front, though only the first with a motion scanner. To use as scouts until we see aliens, and with firepower to shoot them down, or a psi-amp do we need anything extra.
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/236-loadout2.png)
8x of these behind the others. Overkill deluxe.. But lets have some fun..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/236-loadout3.png)
8x of these, with psi-amp ready to help out..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/236-loadout4.png)
And 2x last here. Not that we need the mind probe with psi-amps, but it's not that they need a weapon either.
Turn 1 we weren't able to spot anyone, so we dropped smoke at avenger level and ground level and threw out 2 flares.. In turn 2 we moved some scouts out and soon recruited more scouts.
Here's the state at the end of turn 2:
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/237-turn2.png)
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/238-at_exit_area.png)
How did this exit work again? Do I have to press abandon button? It says I have 24 in exit area. Where did I hide the last 2?
Turns out there was a couple of aliens that got conscious again, so I had to take out those, and then I did that I finished and moved on with all. Probably wouldn't have had to move them to the exit area in the first place..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/239-final_assault_info.png)
Yay...
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/240-final_base_assault_start.png)
Start looks like a standard base assault on earth.. It's been a while since I did the final mission so my memory is shady.. I thought I'd remember the last mission having a huge elevator where we moved down to the base with the avenger on top floor, but maybe I'm remembering it wrong..
-
You've almost got it! Stay cautious, this part can be brutal. (https://openxcom.org/forum/Themes/InsidiousV1-k/images/post/thumbup.gif)
Start looks like a standard base assault on earth.. It's been a while since I did the final mission so my memory is shady.. I thought I'd remember the last mission having a huge elevator where we moved down to the base with the avenger on top floor, but maybe I'm remembering it wrong..
Sadly not... perhaps the PS1 version was like that?
-
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/241-final_base_turn1.png)
After turn 1, we have spotted quite a few aliens and mapped out a lot of areas..
Guessing the brain is upstairs on the western end there..
Have tried to position aliens in junctures to easily re-aquire them next turn, then going to start clear areas and move out of them.
-
In turn two, we spotted ethereals below the brain area.. We went up and found it. With enough Ethereals there we ordered them to kill the brain.. And then Victory!!!
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/242-final_base_turn2_brain_dead.png)
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/243-victory1.png)(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/243-victory2.png)(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/243-victory3.png)(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/243-victory4.png)(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/243-victory5.png)
And finally the score..
(http://www.humbe.no/public/computergames/ufo/pub1/244-final_score.png)
-
I notice that some of the score sounds wrong..
For instance, we've hired much more than 25 scientists, but we had 25 scientists hired when we went for final mission. We've also hired much more soldiers. The one failed mission was when we attacked the first base without bringing flares, so we went straight back to await flares incoming. That was zero score. The worst score was probably in a small mission with multiple deaths.
Almost all deaths of soldiers happened prior to us having psi control. Then everything is easy. We of course delayed a lot longer than we needed to, but felt nice to build up all the bases being ready for anything..
I guess next play through will be with some constraints on psionics use. It makes the game way easy. It's still possible to lose soldiers early in a fight before you've recruited enough alien scouts, but if one is careful until that happens, the chance of losing one is fairly slim.
-
Some game notes/learnings/remarks:
- Using graphs to scan for activity works fairly well and avoid early game failure by not detecting enough, but was very tedious.
- Using expendable soldiers as scouts made it possible to still train and keep the rest alive even on Ironman.
- Using smoke grenades on turn 1 and awaiting moving out until turn 2 was a lot of help surviving transport exit.
- Psionics is as I already know totally overpowered, and made the game cakewalk after we got it. New to me was that we got xp for psionic failures, and one can panic already panicked alien, so it was really easy to level it fast.
- Even on ironman were we lost 50 soldiers, bravery still didn't really seem to matter.
- As soldiers health grows, with armor, they have a good chance of surviving even a heavy plasma hit.
- Camping seemed the safest way to take UFOs prior to psionics but the tactic is boring. (try to stay far enough away from aliens so they don't spot you in their turn, and then spot to move anyone having exited chokepoint and kill them and move back.)
- The risk of base attack seems low, especially if you try to take on UFOs on the ground when you can and shoot down scouts on retaliation missions ASAP. No base defense at all would have worked out fine for us.
- Having one troop transport is enough. When there's too much activity for one transport, use interceptors with plasma beams to take down all but one.
- Bringing along a pistol with a clip for everyone makes it way easier to train reactions/accuracy. Doing very little damage is very useful as you get xp per actual hit and number of aliens are limited.
- Terror units are great for practice, as they have decent armor so can withstand many pistol hits. Those with melee attacks only can also be set up in situations where training is safe also without psionics.
- It seems to be possible for a terror unit with melee attack to reaction fire if you shoot it at point blank range. I had a death I couldn't explain otherwise, but it sounds a bit strange.
- In OpenXCom, a psi lab doesn't train you past 100 either.
-
Sadly not... perhaps the PS1 version was like that?
Right.. I see there's a mod to use PSX version of Cydonia map.. I played on PC but not 100% sure what version. I'll try to enable that option and see what I get next time around...
-
Bringing along a pistol with a clip for everyone makes it way easier to train reactions/accuracy. Doing very little damage is very useful as you get xp per actual hit and number of aliens are limited.
Yeah, that's true! For those who play FMP bringing Sub Machine Gun even better as it deal 1 less damage and has 15% SNAP SHOT cost instead of 18% for Pistol. Unfortunately it do not come along with auto reaction experience points count of 12 round clip limit (SMG clip is 30 rounds large), so you have to do it yourself every turn, which will add some fun but waste time.
But that is all nothing compared to smoke grenade! It has crazy RADIUS, counts toward firing accuracy, but deals ZERO damage! Better yet, it counts for every smoked sell occupied by enemy units. See those two Reapers partying together? Get your worst shooter and smoke them! He'll instantly gets 8 exp points, which now easily can be turned 11 and that is +2...+6 to Firing Accuracy by the price of $150 and some otherwise useless pawn TU.
Now, you've started your new game and shot your first scripted scout (turning off missiles and shooting only cannon, of course). But all you have is crappy rookies with low strength and no TU at all? There is a way to train every one! Get each soldier armed smoke and make them unload them all on single present enemy. This will get insane stat boost out of almost nothing. And at the start every stat point counts.